Fallback HA server

[luciandf (Lucian)]

Hello all,

I have a bit of an off question. I am running HA in a VM on my proxmox server with some other services. At the moment this server is consuming quite a lot with 6 hdds. I was thinking of turning it off during the night and back on with a WOL script in the morning/ when I need it.

For this reason I need a failback HA server that I was thinking could be run on a raspberry pi in order to monitor my various esps and run the automations.

I water the garden at around 4 am in the morning and in the winter I turn on the heating in the house.

Is it possible to have such a failover HA server? Something that takes over when the main one is down? I am not talking about power cuts like this poster was concerned about:

Fallback server

What do you do about all the hardware devices it talks to? I have several different brands of WiFi plugs and switches, plus a growing Zigbee network (which requires a Zigbee USB controller) plus some things connected to GPIO pins. I’d have a hard time putting together a representative test environment. As an example, the latest update breaks my Honeywell integration. I don’t think their cloud API would allow me to connect from two different HA integrations, but if I could it would force me to p…

If there is a power cut then all the ESPs would be dead anyway.

[tmjpugh]

Many devices allow multiple connections and control by multiple servers

Zwavejs MQTT can be controlled/monitored from multiple HA

IP devices can normally be controlled/monitored from multiple devices/servers

You can setup RasPi with HA that monitor 24/7 and only control when main server offline. Ultimately I’d ask why not make the RasPi your permanent HA server as this sounds like pain to manage and possibly less reliable overall

[luciandf (Lucian)]

I am reluctant to use the raspi as the main HA beucase I have had raspis die for no reason in the past. I have them in the attic on a UPS and they would just become unreachable. Maybe it was just bad sd cards…

I am looking at the nabu casa yellow with the raspi cm4 but they are quite dificult to find these days. maybe I should get a regular RPi4 and use it with an ssd instead of an sd card…

Thank you for your advice! For now I may have to just create a schedule for the server to bring it bag to life when needed or something like that.

[tmjpugh]

@luciandf

Maybe it was just bad sd cards

SD fail 100%. HQ SD cards are no issue or just change every 1-2yrs.

SD fails Wont magically stop when you make it a backup. I think RasPi with ssd will work well

[luciandf (Lucian)]

i am looking at a raspberry pi 4 8gb version right now and will use a ssd with it. thank you!

[tom_l]

Note that you may need a larger power supply if using an SSD.

[luciandf (Lucian)]

how much larger? is the original one with 5V and 3A output not enough?

[tom_l]

It might be. It might not be. The 3A plug pack spec assumes you are using an SD card. Though it is fairly conservative.

Just something to be aware of if you have issues.

[luciandf (Lucian)]

so to be extra sure I should bump it to a 4A one or something like that?