Hi, I have been using Home Assistant for a couple of years running on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) as a supervised installation on top of Debian. I have just noticed that Supervised is becoming unsupported by year end.
I have run Supervised in the past as I run other programs on this raspberry pi (mainly managing investment data via data scraping (including some via Selenium) but do other functions also.
From the Home Assistant point I have power monitoring (energy tab), cameras, mariaDB, notifications to TV, hot water system, plex (HA Addon), Jellyfin, Tuya integration for fans, lights and few other things.
From what I have read so far it seems to indicate that proxmox is the solution for my use case but have some queries about this
Is Proxmox Free (Community) adequate for this?
How does port forwarding work (any weird issues likely with duckdns / letsencrypt as my HA instance is exposed external). What about similar servers running on the Host system. Have read that each virtual machine can be like its own direct node on network via multiple virtual network adaptors /bridge (ie. Host debian system can be 192.168.0.10 and HAOS can be 192.168.0.11, extra vm could be 192.168.0.12 etc.). Is this correct and is it a complex process to set up like this
I utilise Mariadb Mysql Server Addon (for data from HA and also external investment management and other stuff). Will this continue to be fine (I can’t see why not really but using VMs is something I have had little experience in the past
Given it is running on a Raspberry Pi4 (which it copes fine) is this likely to still be the case with running Debian and then the HAOS VM on top or would it reduce it to a crawl
Can HomeAssistant OS start automatically on boot up of the main system or does it become something that needs to be loaded manually each time that Debian is booted.
Kind of unrelated to the above but as listed I utilise the Energy Monitor feature. From a historical standpoint is it possible to back this up and import it into the new HA instance. I would likely want to re-setup everything else from scratch (just so it is clean) but like to know if I can selectively restore certain elements like energy whilst not restoring other things
Lastly I have also read a bit about LXC which seems to be new idea option instead of VM in proxmox. What is the thoughts of this and would this likely be a supported install or is proxmox vm the way to go.
I’m impressed that you have so much running in 4GB
I am no expert on Proxmox … but upgraded from HAOS running stand-alone on a Raspberry Pi 4 to HAOS as a VM under Proxmox on a second-hand Optiplex 7050 PC i got cheap on ebay. I followed one of the Community guides and it all went smoothly.
yes, I am using the free Proxmox for my HA machine
I have a USB zigbee controller which is forwarded to HAOS VM.
My HAOS VM also has its own static IP Address
HA Addons under HAOS physically run in Docker containers - thankfully the mechanics of this are all hidden from me.
Proxmox is a cut-down OS to run the Virtual machines (though I added samba shares to the base OS instead of adding a file server VM).
HAOS includes a tailored OS … so you won’t need Debian as a separate layer (at least not for your HA VM).
My concern would be whether Proxmox, HAOS and whatever other VM(s) you run will all fit into only 4GB of memory.
Yes, Proxmox and HAOS will both start up automatically.
I don’t use HA Energy monitoring or LXC, so cannot comment on those.
I don’t understand the fascination with ProxMox on minimal hardware.
It is a huge mistake to send Home Assistant users to install ProxMox on a dedicated server like a Raspberry Pi, Intel NUC or other micro PC.
I run HAOS on bare metal.
Flash the HAOS image to the boot drive.
Reboot.
That’s it. Done. No learning curve for Proxmox, Docker, VM’s. No USB or Network issue. No managing disk or memory allocations.
The downside of bare metal? Your Home Assistant host computer is just that. Dedicated to one task. It just works.
If the user needs to run other programs on their Home Assistant server that aren’t available in an add-on, migrating to ProxMox can always be a solution later.
You weren’t in a supported state before, so why does the depreciation of Supervised support concern you now?
Since Proxmox VE isn’t supported on a Raspberry Pi, you aren’t making much of a change support-wise.
The supervised install running Home Assistant and Add-ons already has a similar networking scheme operating under the hood.
Not likely.
If running a supported environment is really important to you, you’re not really a candidate for Proxmox. Not enough memory, not the right CPU architecture. not the right disk hardware (you don’t mention what the storage of your RPi is). Can you find ways around all these things? Yes, but then you aren’t supported, again.
I’d move to HAOS if I were you. Buy another PI for the things you can’t run under HAOS.
Thanks for the prompt replies everyone and some clarifications and suggestions.
So from my initial understanding the updates that come through currently (ie to HA Core, Plex, Jellyfin, MariaDB among others) will cease as of end of this year (If I am still running the current Supervised install). Can someone clarify if this understanding is correct or not? The fact of not being classed as “Supported” doesn’t particularly bother me but I do want to be able to continue to update my system for enhancements that happen in the future without having to do a bunch of extra manual steps in the background etc. I am aware at current when host system packages are out of date etc. that sometimes that has affected me being able to do some updates in HA however this is usually resolved by a few apt-get update / upgrade / dist-upgrade and then they usually go through again (that is fine).
And to clarify the investment stuff and other things I run are a small load via cron jobs which data scrape investment sites once a day for stocks I currently hold which takes all of 10 minutes (including a few which have to happen via Selenium due to logging in and Javascript) so it is hardly worth me offloading those to a separate pi and then I have the issue of network communication between the two pi’s etc as that data is stored in the MariaDB and basic summary displayed inside my HA dashboards). It is not like I am actively using the “Host OS” for other duties and what HA does is not exactly time critical usually.
So whilst I understand that having things split off in many systems is sometimes ideal if I did that for all things I run at home I would have heaps of added devices on my network and make administering things a far bigger headache BUT if I have no other option then I will need to go that route but just trying to work this all out soon so I can start to prep for it so its not a frantic rush in Nov/Dec
Sure, you can also run Home Assistant on Debian. It called “Supervised”.
That’s what I said earlier - what is the difference between running an unsupported version of Home Assistant or running an unsupported version of Proxmox?
What I need is the ability to have addons and software updates supported through past the end of this year. If what I have now is going to continue then I will just leave it all as it is. The documentation at the moment seems very confusing
As these installation methods are used for the development of Home Assistant, it will still be technically possible to update them. We still would recommend migrating to a supported method, but that’s your choice.
What does technically possible to update them mean?
In a table further down it recommends to for Full control of the host system where currently using Supervised to Migrate to Run Home Assistant OS in a VM, or Container (alongside add-on containers)
Then further down
Blockquote
For Home Assistant Supervised users, we recommend migrating to Home Assistant OS—it supports everything Supervised does, including add-ons. If you want more control over the OS, you can also run Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine, like with Proxmox, or go the Home Assistant Container path alternatively.
In any case it just all seems a little unclear even though what they are trying to do is simplify it. May be best for me to just sit on it for a month or two and see what documentation emerges to make it clearer
I don’t think it depends on the type of pc. For virtualization and multiple VMs / services memory is the main pain point.
On a Pi5 with 8GB you can run HAOS and a few extra services without a problem I guess.
And a NUC, where you can upgrade your memory: Why not. These micro PCs don’t waste too much energy on idle and with 32GB or 64 Ram you can run a lot VMs / LXCs or Docker stuff (in another VM) without limitations.
The main benefit in my eyes is the easy backup / restore of the guest os with proxmox.
I had some bad luck with HAOS not booting anymore on updates in the past years and trust Proxmox way more to be stable in this context.
