I have two HA instances for our two places, both running on an Intel NUC and inside VirtualBox. One has been pretty solid, while the other has been frustratingly instable and keeps crashing, rendering HA unresponsive. Because I started both instances from scratch, and simply added integrations and add-ons one by one, I suspect one of them is causing the issue. Both places have different devices and therefore the integrations/addons in use are different as well. Attached is a screenshot of VB’s screen when the issue occurs and HA becomes unresponsive.
I tried to look at logs but haven’t found any smoking gun, and it’s unclear which log is the right one to help detect which integration or other issue is crashing HA. Hoping for some help because at this stage I’m half thinking of reverting back to SmartThings, which, with all its limitations, has been rock solid for me for over 6 years.
Seems this is a VirtualBox issue…
cpu stall was the main reason I abandoned VB and moved to VMware…
It is a bit more complex to configure, but way more stable😉
Thanks, will try migrating to VMware… weird that one of my instances seem quite stable, both locations use the same exact NUC, same VB install, etc. only difference is some of the integrations that are installed. Will try and report back.
I wanted to follow-up up and report that after a few days of moving both HA installations from Virtual Box to VMWare Player, none of the issues I had have reoccured, so this was 100% due to VB. Extra bonus, VB was never reliably connecting my USB Nortek adapter, every other times I would have to reboot the host PC. With VMWare, from what I can tell in a few days of use, restarts, etc. I don’t seem to have any issues and the USB adapter is always recognized and working as expected in VMWare. All in all, seems like a much more solid platform for running HA. A bit more involved in the beginning, as it’s necessary to manually edit the .vmx file to do things like ensuring the Nortek USB adapter connects automatically on boot, but well worth it once all setup and running. I have VMWare running headless on boot and I kind of forget about it now, whereas VB required more “care and feeding”. Once again, thanks @aceindy for the tip!
