As I have been impressed with the reliability of HASS.IO running in a VM on my Mac Mini (I am sure I had power issues on the PI) - I have reinvigorated my use of Node Red and have moved my automations (trivial and complex) to Node Red, and all is working perfectly. My only small frustration was having no clear link between the HA Front end and Node Red for what automations existed and whether they were enabled. My solution was to add an empty automation. (that triggers at 00:00 but does nothing). I can then check the status of the automation (on or off) in my node red flow and enable/disable as appropriate. Process seems to work perfectly .
My question is. What other approaches do people take to manage NR based automations from HA ?