Currently considering a hardware change and i don’t 100% understand my options.
At the moment i have a windows 10 machine running HA on virtualisation, with Blue Iris handling CCTV (12 cameras), and there is also a small plex library. Works ok and is as stable as W10 is ever going to be.
To benefit from tighter HA integration, i was thinking of changing my CCTV over to Frigate with a Coral. As i understand it, to run Frigate i’m better off using a different setup (ie not W10). An ‘NUC’ , which i understand to be those little intel boxes, seems to be a common choice here.
What i dont understand is the ‘base’ software or OS - can i use my W10 machine, wipe it and repurpose it to get it to run HA and Frigate on one machine? Or should i leave my W10 running HA and plex, and get a NUC for Frigate alone? Bare metal, debian, linux, docker etc etc - i dont properly understand so cant make an informed choice…
A NUC is just a miniPC, since you already have a system with a working setup you would just install the coral APU for frigate there instead.
It just comes down to how you want to have your overall setup.
I currently run my HA instance in virtualbox on a windows11 host on a NUC5i7RYH as I use synology surveillance station to keep my camera feeds up on it for when I have the monitor turn on and its in an Akasa passive case so its completely silent and I use hass.agent to control the audio level when I play spottily through the usb speaker connected to it.
A NUC is just a standard PC, so yes, your W10 machine can just be switched to HA in one of the many installation types available.
Just remember to disabled SecureBoot in BIOS, because where W10 requires it, HAOS or Linux do not like it.
So i can switch my W10 to linux as the OS - that much I am ok with (although i’ve never done it)
HA can then run on that, that much i know. Will frigate run ‘side-by-side’ with HA as a ‘program’ installed on linux? Having had a very quick read it looks like i’d wipe windows, install Linux then HA, then install in linux Docker, Debian then Frigate. Does that sound about right?
If you’re not already comfortable with Linux, and don’t want to be, then I’d instead suggest you either:
Install HAOS where you can run Frigate as an add-on. The downside is that HAOS is limited in supporting only one disk for storage, which isn’t ideal for Frigate.
Install Proxmox. Then you can create two virtual machines (VMs). One for HAOS, and another for Linux where you can run Frigate.
Personally I’m quite at home with Linux and I’d install Debian + Docker and run it all in Docker - but not everybody wants to do that.
Install Proxmox and then make a virtual machine (VM) and run HAOS in that.
Proxmox is like the Windows 10 setup with virtualization you have now, but with Windows slimmed down to what is just need to run and manage the virtualization. This is a versatile setup that you can change later with only little work to be done, if you suddenly decide to not run Frigate inside HAOS or if you decide to run other stuff like a media server.
I recommend proxmox as well. I’m not an expert when it comes to computers, but I was able to get it up and running without too much difficulty.
My favorite part? Because I’m not very technical, when I want to try something new, I spin up a new VM and play around with it until I understand it, then I can move it over to my ‘production’ VM. This means I can try something 15 times and never worry about messing up my already working setup.
You can also take snapshots before you move something to your production system in case you break it. It’s easy to roll back to a working version.
NUC is a trademark of Intel. Micro-PCs are not NUCs.
Home Assistant is hardware agnostic, so when you decide that you made a bad decision migrating to another system is rather straightforward.
“Bare Metal” means HAOS on an X-86 computer without any virtualization, containers or other software that you have to learn. Yes, the add-ons all use the same disk, so get a bigger disk. The only downside to bare-metal is that you can’t use the PC for other unrelated software. It is your Home Assistant server. Period. If you want to run games or MS Office, get a PC.
My Home Assistant is running bare-metal on an Intel NUC i3 in the server closet in my basement. The i3 is considered “old”, but still dances rings around any Raspberry Pi. I have six cameras on Frigate and close to 100 devices (a mixture of WiFi, Z-wave and Zigbee). I neither know nor want to learn how to manage virtualization or containers. With HAOS on bare-metal, I don’t need to.
For the purists- yes, I know that HAOS is a container . HAOS is built on the Buildroot Linux distribution. The Supervisor, Core and Add-Ons are in separate Docker containers. But I don’t have to manage them, nor could I if I wanted to.
Ah - so there is a nugget of info in there that i didnt realise. If I ‘bare metal’ home assistant onto the PC, then i can still have Frigate running within that ‘bare metal’ installation? There is not much on the plex beyond the kids nativity plays so it could be omitted if required
Bare metal with HAOS means the operating system on the hardware will be HAOS with the restrictions that have. This means Frigate will have to run inside HAOS as an addon. This might be fine, but you can not then decide to move Frigate out of HAOS, because there is no possibility for this.
At the risk of being pedantic, this is conceptually, but not technically, correct. I’d describe it as Proxmox is an operating system like Windows is an operating system. Proxmox is highly efficient with minimal overhead (unlike Windows plus virtualization), free (for personal use) and open source. Proxmox provides virtualization capabilities so you can easily run HA and other things without any Windows layer underneath. (Among other benefits, this means no Windows license cost, and no unexpected reboots due to Windows updates.)
I knew nothing about Proxmox until I followed the excellent Community Guide here, but I found it simple, powerful, and stable, and have been very pleased with my HA environment since installing it using this method.
I tried to make the analogy for Windows.
Proxmox is in fact Linux slimmed down to only what is needed to run and manage the virtualization, but Windows was what the user knew.
It is therefore true that there is no Windows layer underneath. There is a Linux layer instead, but that is just the name that is different.
You might think Windows is the graphical interface, but Windows is much more than that and much more modular. Windows can also be a hypervisor only with no graphical interface, just like Proxmox, and it is in fact a free product, al though not a open source.
The terms you are looking for are Host for the primary OS that is installed baremetal then the Guest that is installed via either a built in Virtualization tool or a third party one.
Proxmox in this case is a Host Hypervisor Server to allow resource allocation to the Virtual Guest Machines that are setup through it.
Yes Windows allows the GUI access to this so does Proxmox and others like Unraid, VMware, Virtualbox etc; Windows inbuilt tool is called Hyper-V and is mainly limited to the pro and server editions of the OS but there is a stand alone free version that can be installed without a GUI.
What you choose comes down to how you want to run the homelab and your needs and the hardware you have to work with. Some NAS systems have the option to run virtual installs as well so you can look into those if you have supporting hardware are the time.
Bare metal in the HA context typically refers to running HA on a full featured Linux based system with no containerization. While HA can be run truly “bare metal” directly on the base OS it is typically run in a Python Virtual Environment (venv) to ease issues with library dependencies with other software running on the base OS. Both of those install methods are what people are usually talking about when they say bare metal.
HAOS is HA in a containerized environment with a pared down Linux as the OS.
You definitely can run other apps alongside HA on a bare metal install (either directly on the OS or in a venv). But if you don’t run it in a venv then you need to be aware of and manage the various libraries and package version needed by the various different apps.
you won’t be able to use the HAOS based machine to run anything other than what can be installed via a HA add-on.
Many people who want to run HAOS alongside other non-HA based apps will opt for a virtualization layer to allow HAOS to be installed on a different base OS. That allows the base OS the freedom to run any other apps the user wants but also allows the HAOS system to manage it’s own dependencies and ecosystem internal to the virtual machine.
Be aware that many people also find running HAOS in a virtualization system on a Windows base OS to be problematic. Some are using it successfully and it sounds like there is progress on that front but I don’t know if I would run it like that unless it was absolutely necessary.
The trademark for “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC) is owned by Intel. However, in July 2023, Intel announced that it would no longer develop NUC mainboards and matching mini PCs. They subsequently granted a non-exclusive license to ASUS to manufacture, sell, and support NUC products. But Intel still owns the trademark
Add-ons like Frigate and Plex are in their own containers. But, running HAOS bare-metal means that you don’t have to learn or worry about managing the containers. I have six cameras on my Frigate add-on. I have hundreds of videos on my Plex server, but it is on another NUC computer. I don’t get why you would want it as an add-on unless you want to watch videos remotely (on another network other than your home network). For that I have Zerotier on my Plex server. But that should be discussed in a whole other thread.
Can you find some resource on that?
I can see that Intel have removed the NUC from their trademark list in the link I provided earlier and I have searched the net for more info, but I have only found that the non-exclusive agreement seems to only relate Intel NUC generation 10 to 13, that is now solds and supported by ASUS.
ASUS will make new NUC generation 13 and future generations under their own name as ASUS NUC. (Footnote on NUC Overview)
Multiple sources, including news articles and product announcements, consistently mention that Intel owns the NUC trademark and granted ASUS a non-exclusive license to manufacture, sell, and support NUC products.
