I currently run home assistant virtualised via VB on a Windows 10 all in one touchscreen PC. It’s been suggested a few times on the forum it’s not the best way to run HA and would be better to get rid of windows and run HAOS but I’ve always been reluctant as no experience with any OS’s other than Windows and I’d rather keep Windows as still use it for a few things I haven’t found a way to do another way.
Anyway I’ve got a 2nd HDD and there is spare slots in the all in one to fit a 2nd HDD with the intention of installing HAOS on the 2nd HDD then still got Windows 10 on the other.
I’m all good to go so just doing some final research so I know as many facts as possible (as this is all new to me) and just discovered HAOS has no UI, it literally just runs HAOS and thats it. The current setup I have via Windows, I use the all in one touchscreen as the main display as well as running home assistant so not being able to do the same with HAOS has made me put the brakes on a bit.
I did have a thought however which I’m pretty sure won’t work but wondered if one of you chaps thats much cleverer than me can confirm… Would it be possible to boot in to and launch HAOS then somehow keep that running in the background while at the same time booting in to Windows 10 from the other HDD so I have use of a web browser to display my dashboards? Longshot I know but worth an ask!
As I already suspected, I didn’t think it would be feasable.
I wasn’t told my setup was bad, just that running HAOS would be better and the question was asked as to why I don’t get rid of Windows (from one of my other posts)
I run quite a lot on my system and have a touch screen display on pretty much all the time along with quite a few automations etc and have been finding lately it’s become quite glitchty with errors which seem to resolve once I shut down and restart the VM in VB - simply restarting HA doesn’t always solve the problems and Oracle seems to use a hell of a lot of resources compared to what is actually being used by home assistant so thought perhaps changing my setup might improve some of these issues.
No, although it runs from Windows 10, it’s literally just used for running home assistant. I think I mentioned earlier it’s an all in one touchscreen PC so as well as running home assistant it’s also setup in my front room as a display too where is displays a dashboard in kiosk mode with CCTV feeds and my solar info amalgemated in to one dashboard.
[edit] - Just re-read your last paragraph properly - I run home assistant as a VM through Virtualbox on just a normal Windows 10 system. What do you mean by ‘run a server’?
It means as a (dedicated) computer running all the time.
If you run HAOS in a VM, I don’t see an issue. Perhaps not the most efficient in terms of resources, but not a big deal. If you haven’t had issues with your setup, just leave it as is.
Just bite the bullet. Run HAOS bare-metal on a micro-PC, like an Intel NUC. In the long run you will be really happy that your Home Assistant server is running quietly in the basement, and you should only rarely ever need to even see it.
No managing VM’s or containers or dual-boots. No bridging IP or USB ports.
You can buy a used Intel NUC on eBay for less than the cost of a new Raspberry Pi5. Best of all, most micro-PC’s will beat the Raspberry PI in every metric.
I thought I’d give a quick update for anyone that’s interested.
I spent blimmin ages trying to get my HP all in one to recognise a second HDD but it just wouldn’t so gave up. I then remembered I have an old HP i3 laptop I don’t use but was again reluctant to wipe Windows in case I had problems installing HAOS plus bound to be bits and and pieces on it I’d want at some point. So out of curiosity I took the HDD out and put in the one I’d been trying to fit in the all-in-one as they were identical.
The laptop picked up the HDD no problem at all so I followed the online guide booting to Ubuntu from USB and installing HAOS that way. Amazingly it was a piece of cake. I thought I’d give it a try restoring a backup from the virtualised HA I had been running through VB thinking surely there will be a whole host of issues but even more amazingly it restored and booted absolutely fine.
The laptop has the same RAM as the all in one I’d been running HA on but the processor is a little slower but even so it’s using much less resource than when virtualised and the automation pop up’s are virtually instantaneous where as there was quite some lag before.
Has been running around a week now without any of the problems I had before of various errors and constantly having to reboot the system so @stevemann you were definitely right for sure
