I am currently running ha on a rpi3 but I am getting very tired of the very slow reboot times.
I was thinking of getting a cheap used i5/i7 box and put VMWare or VirtualBox on it and run HA in a raspbien virtual machine. Has anyone done this? Would you recommend this?
Thanks
Steven
raspbian is for a pi only.
you could just run ubuntu on the host and use docker or hassio on ubuntu…
I have HA running in a Lubuntu VM on my desktop as a test machine, so there is not problem there.
But, like @flamingm0e, if I had a dedicated computer to run HA, I would install linux as the OS and run HA in a docker container.
Edit:
And, of course, reboot time is only significant if you reboot often. Once you have a stable system, you will hardly have to reboot at all.
Good information.
I reboot occasionally because I seem to be always adding new components. I realize ti can just reread automations and groups but I need to reboot to get changes to the configuration.yaml (don’t I?).
I don’t know enough about docker containers to feel comfortable. I want this machine to be used for general linux development also.
Steven
I run an Dell 9010 (office desktop) and run ESXi on that. From there i create virtual machines, one of which is Home Assistant. It runs on an Ubuntu server instance which is lightweight and has been super stable for me.
I really like the option to copy a VM can create a dev/test environment with relative ease.
HA restart times are significantly reduced from my hassbian install on a Pi.
Lots of different options to do the same thing, this is just what I choose to use.
Raspian = debian adapted for a Raspberry pi.
Using debian (or one of its derivatives like Ubuntu as suggested above) on a ‘real’ computer is very similar from the point of view that any guide you read that says ‘ssh in to your pi and type these commands…’ it will all work fine.
no need to do a full reboot.
At most you should only need to restart the home-assistant service for changes to your config files.
I have an old laptop running Windows 10, virtualbox -> Ubuntu (not server as I want desktop, I am not well known in linux) -> HA
Works like a charm.
indeed only restart the home assistant service through the UI configuration for edits on the configuration.yaml
Sorry to double post on this but something I forgot to mention was to be aware of the power consumption difference between a Pi and a i5/i7 box.
A pi will pull about 5W from the wall. A i5/i7 box can pull 60-80 watts from the wall or more depending on your setup.
Also HA requires very little horsepower. I have a dual core (4 thread) i5-3470T which also runs my router and the overhead of ESXi. It stays in the low single digits 99% of the time. You can get away with pretty low power hardware.
I had a Zotac CI323 I ran HA on for a bit and it was snappy. Its processor is a 4 core and has a 6W tdp compared to the 45W tdp of my i5. Much different power overhead but equal performance IMO. I wish it ran ESXi without some hacking as its a great little box. I like the flexibility of esxi so I put the Zotac up for sale.
Thanks.
I was looking at getting a Dell 9010 i7 SFF for a few hundred dollars. Lots of good information in this post. If anything else comes to mind, please post.
Steven
I have HA running on Ubuntu on a VM…works flawlessly
NUCs are great options for home servers like this (IMO). In my case, I already have a NAS for bulk storage and just want something with some processing power behind it that uses very little electricity (in the ballpark of a laptop). NUCs are a little pricier, but are great little machines to run Home Assistant, Plex Media Server, etc. Throw in Docker and a good backup system and you’re set.
Had HA running on top of ESXi dedicated CentOS7. Considering the amount of hardware you want to pass into HA (usb sticks, or something else like mysensors gateway) wet the RPi3 way. And interestingly enough 2 Xeon cores and system on SSD didn’t give any noticeable speed advantage over RPi3
Interesting so hear this. I see a big difference when using the ‘check config’ button on the front end and restarts are faster. Im guessing the platforms/components one has enabled changes the load significantly.
Well maybe check config is faster. Restarts as well. But overall home automation performance is not about that right? 
I think you would have to get a huge system going before it would bog down a Pi with respect to just automation firing and updates happening.
The OPs concern was with restarting and working on the system. I remember awhile back when there was a bug that made restarts slow, it was painful to work on changes. So although not the core performance metric for home automation, it is an important factor, especially when getting started.
When you want to make a quick change and restart to check that it is working, it’s a pain in the ass waiting on a pi to restart the service…My time is more valuable than that. Moving to Docker on a NUC was WELL worth it to me.
I think you’ll be better off ensuring good network throughput, by getting faster routers and/or access points, and making sure that that the NIC on your HA hardware can handle hi speed and thicker bandwidth. This will give you better response time from your devices.
I agree. But I have learned to make a full backup of my Sd card before every major change to my config (HA updates, installing new packages, etc.). I have found that doing this with my pi3 means to shutdown, get the card out, copy it then start things up again.
It will be much faster to make a snapshot of a VM and then restart.
+1 for the ESXi, but remember that rebooting the role ESXi machine took some time, so it’s better to have a UPS. I run mine on a HP microserver, so it doubles as my fileserver, firewall, etc…