Configurating the basics for Long Term

Configuration
1

I have the Home Assistant Operating system installed in a Lenovo Thin client Intel I3 with 8GB RAM, for info, it works a treat, nice and quick with low power consumption, lots of help is available online to get it installed and working and it works well.

I thought I would make good use of the 128GB SSD by getting HA to store lots of history, which leads me to my questions, and please keep in mind that my Linux skills are limited at best!

1 – What’s the best database to use?

Right now, I am using the built-in one, whatever that is, but I keep coming across posts that recommend switching to another, but they don’t say how. So, I thought I would ask the community for their thoughts with no limits on disk space as I can easily upgrade the HD to 2TB if necessary.

2 - How do I find stats on how much data is being consumed?

I am used to Microsoft SQL database management so ideally something like that, but right now I don’t know if I am using 100MB or 100GB

3 - Assuming my database is quite small, how can I increase the retention time?

I have noticed that I can only go back about 10 days on some items like my Fridge Door opening times or the temperature probes. I know I have a yearly status for my energy, but I suspect that’s a calculated number as I can only see my hourly consumption for about 10 days.

Any help and/or pointers would be much appreciated, and a walk-through would be even better.

Thanks in advance

Adam

2

  1. The default SQL database is fine. It used to be that the MariaDB addon gave significant performance improvement but this is no longer the case.

homeassistant:
  allowlist_external_dirs:
    - /config
sensor:
  - platform: filesize
    file_paths:
      - /config/home-assistant_v2.db
  1. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/recorder/#purge_keep_days
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