High RAM Usage (80%) on Home Assistant VM (Proxmox) – Persistent OOM Errors Despite Troubleshooting

[airampg (Airam)]

Hi HA Community,

I’m creating this post as a last resort, we have run out of options. Sorry if it is long; I wanted to foresee as many questions as possible to avoid possible back and forth!
Essentially, we have been experiencing consistently high (80% out of 8GB) RAM usage on our HA instance running as a VM on Proxmox. The issue has persisted for several months (since May 2024, it seems), and we are running out of ideas.

HA:

Proxmox server as a whole:

The current database (home-assistant_v2.db) is currently at ~1.7 GB. The system remains functional until OOM errors occur. We get OOM on the proxmox console (not always) and what seems like a soft reboot (get a HA is starting, but not everything is ready…).

Hopefully, someone can steer us on the right path. We’ve been monitoring memory usage using both Home Assistant’s System Monitor integration and System>Hardware. Both report the same. Memory usage starts at ~80% immediately after booting. CPU utilisation remains low (~7% usually).

One thing that I found always triggers an OOM is going into the “voice assistants” config menu. We are Nabu Casa subscribers but there visit shows no assist set up, despite it being available to use.

And no new assist can be set up. There are no options. (note: we ARE using default_config: on configuration.yaml)

After clicking add assistant, it runs OOM, and when it reloads, I get this for a good few minutes… it seems to forget we have Nabu Casa Cloud!

Even though it works! So there is one right there, and it responds fine to text, with TTS and STT.

The “Expose” menu simply does not load either…!

System Details

• Host Machine:

  • CPU: 8 x Intel(R) Core™ i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
  • RAM: 32 GB
  • Storage: SSD with 10 GB free (allocated 60 GB to the VM, including space for local backups)
    
    

• VM Configuration:

  • Assigned RAM: 8 GB
  • Assigned CPUs: 4 cores

• Home Assistant Installation:

  • Type: Home Assistant OS (VM)
  • Core Version: 2025.1.1 (updated to 2025.1.2, but the issue remained. Reverted a backup since we were doing extensive testing. More on that later)
  • Supervisor Version: 2024.12.3
  • Operating System Version: 14.1
  • Frontend Version: 20250106.0

Add-ons and Integrations

Add-ons Installed:

File editor (5.8.0), 
Duck DNS (1.18.0), 
Terminal & SSH (9.16.0), 
ESPHome Device Builder (2024.12.2), 
Mosquitto broker (6.4.1), 
Node-RED (19.0.0), 
Home Assistant Google Drive Backup (0.112.1), 
AppDaemon (0.16.7), 
Studio Code Server (5.18.0), 
WireGuard (0.10.2), 
AirCast (4.2.3), 
openWakeWord (1.10.0), 
Zigbee2MQTT (2.0.0-2), 
Samba share (12.3.2), 
Tailscale (0.24.0), 
Everything Presence Zone Configurator (1.1.1), 
Whisper (2.4.0), 
Piper (1.5.2),
Glances (0.21.1)

Integrations Enabled:

* adaptive_lighting
* alexa_media
* bluetooth
* cloud
* dlna_dms
* ecovacs
* esphome
* flux_led
* google_assistant_sdk
* google_home
* group
* homekit
* homekit_controller
* iss
* lifx
* localtuya
* min_max
* mobile_app
* moon
* mqtt
* powercalc
* scheduler
* shopping_list
* sun
* systemmonitor
* template
* thermal_comfort
* tplink_router
* tuya
* utility_meter
* xiaomi_ble
* zha
* anniversaries
* ble_monitor
* blitzortung
* bthome
* co2signal
* dnsip
* foldingathomecontrol
* fully_kiosk
* generic_hygrostat
* generic_thermostat
* go2rtc
* hacs
* hildebrandglow_dcc
* hyperion
* ibeacon
* octoprint
* octopus_energy
* openplantbook
* oralb
* private_ble_device
* samsung_soundbar
* smartlife
* switchbot
* wyoming
* group
* min_max
* template
* utility_meter
* hassio
* scheduler
* plant

Troubleshooting Steps

1. Booted into Safe Mode to discard custom integrations and frontend stuff.

2. Disabled remaining Integrations one by one. Rebooted the whole VM (unsure whether it is necessary, but just in case a regular reboot would not clear the RAM of the integrations)

3. Checked Add-on Resource Usage, but none of the add-ons exceed ~1% RAM.
   

   

4. Followed https://community.home-assistant.io/t/2024-5-tracking-down-instability-issues-caused-by-integrations/724441:

   • No runtime errors using ha debug mode.
   • Ran profiler; can provide the logs

5. Tested with Lower RAM Allocation (4 GB). HA booted but the VM became unresponsive with immediate OOM errors.

Let me know if there is anything else I can provide or do. Any help is welcome!

Thank you so so much to the whole community and developers!!!

---

UPDATES:

1. 2025/01/19
   We have created a new VM from scratch, and restored up HA core ONLY from a backup. The memory issue persisted. We then started shelling out the HA by:

• Removing every integration
• Removing every helper
• Wiping out yaml sensors, templates and integrations
• Purging the recorder database completely
  → RAM did not budge, still at over 5 GB.
  For comparison, the same VM config, in the same hardware, with a fresh HA install (set-up) used 0.6 GB of RAM only.

[fleskefjes]

I don’t use it my self, but I know the Alexa media player integration has been causing headaches, try disabling that.

[MaxK (Mark)]

And Studio Code Server add-on may be using up memory.

High memory consumption · Issue #905 · hassio-addons/addon-vscode · GitHub.

[airampg (Airam)]

Thank you! yes, we are aware of the VC Code issue and the Alexa issue. These are currently deactivated, and leaving VS Code off does help massively reduce the amount of OOMs, but the problem persists.

[jpbaril]

Did you find something new since ?

[airampg (Airam)]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. The issue is still ongoing even after restoring a backup on a different server and removing everything (integrations, automation, templates…) leaving Home Assistant core only.

We think there is nothing we can really do and will probably start from scratch

[jouster (Jon Andrews)]

I recently decided to try to fix any small delays I had in my system which I had assumed was either a CPU issue or a memory issue…I started a brand new build and slowly added in integrations and all looked good…having taken CPU usage from 30% ish % on my original build down to 14% on the fresh build…then a day later, it was back at 30%…so I’ve given up…I could buy a better machine but it may be no better all for wasted money and time…

I may try a backup and restore to bare metal but I likePproxmox and currently run PiHole and Z2M (which i stripped out in case that was causing issues) so I so don’t really want more machines because of this one gripe

[Cake1468]

Have you checked Supervisor and HA OS logs?

I’ve had two OOM problems.

One was related to multiple network interfaces and mdns mirroring within a Unifi network.

The other had something to do with nightly backups on Proxmox. It seems the snapshot backup type I was using had some incompatibility with HAOS that led to the excess memory usage. I switched to shutdown backups in the PM interface and those went away. I do however occasionally get errors in my HA logs related to database not sitting down correctly. I think maybe it’s not shutting down cleanly for the backup for some reason.

Edit - I wished I saved to info about the backup incompatibility as it was noted somewhere, but I don’t think I have it.

[Arno_Millenaar (Arno)]

I am using a Mini pc intel celeron n100 3.4 ghz, with the latest HA. I noticed a similar problem: high memory > 84% and cpu >40% usage.

• Rebooting HA made no difference.
• Disabling Node-Red and all other plugins that I don’t really need made no difference.

I switched off the ‘mini pc’ after shutting down the device in the system menu and also removed power. Then re-connected the power again and let the ‘mini pc’ reboot.

Problem solved !

CPU usage is now on average in the 3-6% range and memory around 17% (1.3 GB / 8GB).

Apparently a (cold) OS reboot was needed. Not sure if removing the power is really necessary as I can no longer test this assumption as the problem is now gone.

[duittenb (Dirk)]

Hello Airam,

What command did you use in troubleshooting step 3?

[alexsaas]

@Arno_Millenaar

Apparently a (cold) OS reboot was needed

Unbelievable, that was the trick! Thank you very much.

I also had this high RAM usage of the HA VM in Proxmox when Proxmox stopped the VM every night for backups and then started it again. The HA System Monitor itself didn’t show it. A full reboot of HA resolved the issue, but after every Proxmox backup (every night), the same problem occurred. I couldn’t figure it out and was about to reinstall. Luckily, I came across your post.

I simply shut down HA and then turned off Proxmox and the entire mini PC, waited a few minutes and then turned it back on using the power button. So simple, it was crazy. Immediately afterward, the values ​​were back to normal. To be on the safe side, I waited until the next night and the backup process. But even after that, everything was fine.

Thanks again for sharing. It saved me a lot of work.

[europer]

yes it helps with the shut down but just wait some days and you will have the same issue again, so its not a solution. I dont know the solution but power off and on again is not a solution.

[alexsaas]

Unfortunately true! What a coincidence that you just wrote it, since yesterday evening the error (the high ram usage) is back. Very annoying. Everything was fine for about a week. Very strange.

Edit:

Maybe it has something to do with this:
https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

Discussion on proxmox forum:

Proxmox VE rocks, except for this one thing, the memory usage graph.

[alexsaas]

A small update:
It’s a little crazy. I’ve been waiting a few days with this now. But the high RAM usage lasted about 2 days and then it resolved itself without me doing anything. The values have been back to normal for a good 5 days now. Quite strange.

[Akore (Akore Jepade)]

Following. I also fixed mine by doing the same " (cold) OS reboot"

Will see if it comes back.

[Strontvlieg]

Here are two Home Assistant installations, one of which is used for testing purposes. This installation runs very few sensors with add-ons, yet it has high memory usage.

[Impact]

Use the glances addon to find out why.

[freeDom-1 (Dominik)]

The displayed RAM usage is not a good indicator whether your HA instance actually needs that much RAM. Linux reserves all the RAM it can get for fs caches, so your RAM used will always be very high. This is good and to be expected.
If you want to have a better estimation on how much RAM your HA instance is using rather look into HomeAssistant → Settings → System → Hardware

[jeremyfry]

Holy crap, thank you. I had slowly been upping ram to my HA instance as I figured my addons were using more and more. VS code was using 15gigs of ram and 80% of my CPU. I can scale my VM back so much now.