HA Server Recommendation?

Configuration
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This is my main hobby currently so I am not worried about dropping some cash - would prefer cheaper options but I was also mulling over using a water cooled gaming rig if I couldn’t find a better option - I think the mini PC is the right place to look though and much cheaper! Ideally I would want to locate it in a rather badly ventilated space that gets hot in the summer so I will be checking the temp specs rather closely - however if it is quiet enough I can put it under the TV (central location for good ZWave coverage).

Thanks for the recommendations, running out for a while now but I’ll take a look later.

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I’m using a HP MicroServer Gen8 running Proxmox.

Few VMs running that support what I need, Plex, LibreNMS, HASS, MySQL, DNS + a few more.

I did run Domoticz on the Pi and OpenRemote but as I’ve moved to HASS I’ve phased those out.

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Thanks!

I’ll take a look at all of these and let you know what I finally decide on.

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While I’m on the subject (and not wishing to start any wars) can anyone suggest a Linux distro that they are having success with? Seems like most folks are using Debian/Ubuntu/Raspian - any issues or are they all much of a muchness as far as running HA is concerned?

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Should be all much of the same however I’m a CentOS guy so I’m running HASS on CentOS 7.

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AFter much searching around I just pulled the trigger on an ASRock Beebox 3000 - fanless, Intel Celeron box with LAN, HDMIx3, Ethernet, bluetooth, WiFi. I added a 120GB mSATA SSD and 16GB dual channel memory. Hopefully a step up from the PI, and hopefully not a complete disaster!

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Looks good, some nice built in features and fanless so quite - that’s the one thing I hate about where I’ve got all my gear, it’s not quite silent :smiley:

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Yeah, that was a key consideration. I did like your idea of a mini tower and running a ton of VMs, but I think that is overkill for what I wanted and also it needs to be … quiet! This way I can put it in the living room and tell my wife its a media streamer or something rather than hide it in my hot closet which already has my cable modem, an eero, an Edge router and 2 Synologies in it …

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can anyone suggest a Linux distro that they are having success with?

The one you’re most familiar with; pretty much anything modern will work.

If you’re not familiar with any, then Ubuntu LTS (currently 16.04.1). You don’t want a rolling release like Arch on a server, and CentOS is a decent choice, but get pretty long in the tooth as the months go by. It is easy to get newer software for Ubuntu (as long as you trust random people’s PPAs) and there is MUCH more community support for it. Debian’s also good, but also not as popular/supported as Ubuntu.

ASRock Beebox 3000

Does not look bad!

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And I did look hard at the APU2 and was nearly sold, but the Beebox having HDMI instead of the headless serial for the APU2 made the difference.

Since I am coming from a PI I think I’ll put Debian Jessie on it and see how I go.

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Good feedback, I was curious about Ubuntu - I’ll make a random choice on the day I install it :wink:

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And on further study, it looks like Ubuntu LTS 16.04.1 has kernel 4.4 in it which apparently has much better Braswell support than Debian Jessie with it’s 3.16 kernel… Not that I am averse to building my own kernel, but that would cut in to my HA time, so Ubuntu it is!

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Just reporting back - on my ASRock Beebox N3000 -

For a shade under $250 I have 120GB SSD, 16GB Dual Channel Ram and an N3000 CPU, it comes with WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI (x3) Ethernet and a remote control (which I am hoping that LIRC will support)

Initial impressions are that it is a very well put together and solid device. Fitting memory and the mSATA disk were very easy and it booted up first time. I made a USB boot image of Ubunto LTS 16.04 and it installed like a dream, home assistant installed easily as expected and now I am working on OpenZWave.

The unit is silent and runs only mildly warm and is more than suitable to put in a living room or somewhere similar. I haven’t really stressed it yet, but I noticed a huge difference in performance over my PI3 when compiling OpenZWave - probably because this is a disk intensive activity and the SSD is much faster than the PI’s memory card, which was one of the main reasons I bought it.

Overall, if someone is looking for a big brother to a PI with a small footprint and passive/silent cooling, I can recommend this unit.

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Okay, so any info on how to go about compiling OpenZwave? This is where I got hung up in trying to get HA installed on Linux Mint Sarah. I had a spare, relatively new laptop laying around with good hardware and wanted to get it to work on that machine, but could not get OZW setup and working.

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I followed this tutorial and had no trouble at all.

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Awesome! Thank you @aimc. I wish I had come across that sooner, but I can always try the laptop again and see how it goes.

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Good luck :slight_smile:

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Thank you @aimc for sharing.

I’ve been thinking on give my HA intallation some more space and this looks like a good jump from the RPI3 to the next level.

Have you had any issue in this time?

also, would like to know from others … any other set up to analyze before making the investment on the ASRock?

do we all the rest have HA in RPI?

thanks for sharing!!

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I have been very happy with the ASRock. It sits under my TV and is as quiet as the PI, but noticeably more powerful - I notice it particularly when compiling. It runs Ubuntu flawlessly, works with my ZWave stick and runs Home Assistant as well as my other bits and peices without missing a beat, and is also my main dev machine. In every way it is a great upgrade from the PI and is just what I wanted and well worth the price IMO.

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Cool, sounds very promising.

I’m going to use it to virtualize some stuff with Docker (HA among other stuff). Already have Graphana & Influx for HA and everything goes super cool but … It’s in a very old laptop and I run out of resources when I add hugs like the mySQL or HA …

Good opportunity to upgrade :slight_smile:

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