Native Kubernetes Deployment Support for Home Assistant

Feature Requests
1

Feature Request: Native Kubernetes Deployment for Home Assistant

Category: Core Architecture Enhancement
Type: New Deployment Mode
Priority: High Impact - Community Driven
Integration: Home Assistant Core / Supervisor

:dart: Executive Summary

This feature request proposes adding native Kubernetes deployment support to Home Assistant, alongside existing Home Assistant OS, Container, and Supervised installation methods. This enhancement would transform Home Assistant into a sophisticated, cloud-native platform capable of enterprise-grade scaling, multi-node deployments, and advanced operational capabilities through a custom Supervisor Operator.

:rocket: Problem Statement and Limitations

Existing Home Assistant deployment modes face limitations:

  • Single-node restriction: Limited scalability and redundancy.
  • Manual management: Lacks sophisticated orchestration, automation, and scaling.
  • Operational limitations: Missing DevOps practices, GitOps workflows, enterprise security, and advanced resource management.

These constraints limit Home Assistant’s adoption in enterprise, large-scale residential, and distributed scenarios.

:star2: Proposed Solution: Kubernetes-Native Deployment Mode

Introduce a Kubernetes-native deployment leveraging a Supervisor Operator:

  • Manages Home Assistant lifecycle, add-ons, and configurations.
  • Implements Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) such as HomeAssistantInstance, AddOn, and SupervisorConfig.
  • Supports horizontal/vertical scaling, geographic redundancy, and advanced security.
  • Provides operational excellence via GitOps, automated backups, monitoring, and observability.

:building_construction: Technical Architecture

Key components:

  • Kubernetes Operator: Uses controller-runtime, managing StatefulSets, Services, Ingresses, ConfigMaps, and Persistent Volumes.
  • Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs): Rich schemas managing deployments, add-ons, configurations, and dependencies.
  • Admission Webhooks: Ensure best practices, prevent misconfigurations.
  • Networking & Storage: Zero-trust network policies, service mesh integration, sophisticated storage management with automated backups.

:bar_chart: Benefits and Impact

  • Scalability: Handles complex automations, large device counts, distributed nodes.
  • High Availability: Kubernetes redundancy, health checks, disaster recovery.
  • Operational Excellence: GitOps workflows, automation, comprehensive monitoring.
  • Security: Zero-trust networking, fine-grained access, audit logging, compliance.
  • Community & Developer Growth: New integrations, AI/ML workloads, edge computing.

:dart: Community Benefits

  • Increased enterprise adoption and resources.
  • Expanded developer ecosystem for advanced add-ons.
  • Accelerated innovation in automation, AI integration, edge computing.

:wrench: Implementation Roadmap

Phased approach:

  • Phase 1: Core operator, basic Home Assistant deployments.
  • Phase 2: Advanced add-on management, dependency resolution.
  • Phase 3: High availability, multi-node scaling.
  • Phase 4: Enterprise security, compliance.
  • Phase 5: AI/ML integration, analytics.

:handshake: Community Engagement and Adoption

  • Early feedback, RFCs, prototype demonstrations.
  • Comprehensive documentation, education.
  • Migration tools, compatibility layers.
  • Enterprise validation, partnerships.

:chart_with_upwards_trend: Success Metrics

  • Performance: Reliability, scaling speed, resource efficiency.
  • Adoption: Number of active deployments, community contributions.
  • Impact: Developer engagement, innovation acceleration.
  • Strategic: Market expansion, technology leadership.

:crystal_ball: Future Vision

  • AI integration for intelligent automations.
  • Edge computing for distributed scenarios.
  • Enterprise-grade platform evolution.
  • Expanded ecosystem for developers.

:dart: Call to Action

  • Community feedback, support, and prototype testing.
  • Development team guidance for technical alignment.
  • Collaborative resource planning and phased implementation.

Vote for and support Kubernetes deployment to expand Home Assistant’s capabilities and ecosystem. Your feedback is vital to shaping the platform’s future.

2

  1. Local (and simple) implementation is a core driver of the project so your request does not align at all with current goals and in my opinion is extremely unlikely to be implemented.

  2. Please don’t regurgitate LLM vomit like that again. 90% of it is generic unnecessary guff.

5 Likes
3

You seem to have a lot of experience with Kubernetes. So start coding. Any PR is welcome.

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4

If you’re not interested or capable of constructive discussion, feel free to skip this post. Nobody forced you to read it—so if you can’t handle it respectfully, kindly keep your toxic and irrelevant comments to yourself.

5

I’ve actually already started and have seen multiple successful implementations in various repos. My post aimed to understand if there is an interest and openness from the core team to officially adopt Kubernetes-native deployments—before investing further effort. Glad to hear PRs are welcome :grimacing:

6

You don’t get it. Home Assistant is about local control. There is zero chance it will be developed into a core cloud application. There is no point asking for it. Buy all means feel free to follow this path yourself, others have, but it is not going to be an official installation method. If you understood anything about home assistant you wouldn’t even ask for it.

2 Likes
7

And Tom’s statement which you dismissed is probably not too far off.

They already support docker container. That’s as close as you’re probably gonna get. They have no interest in datacenter class kubernetes because and they’re right…

Home assistant isn’t designed for engineering enterprise scale solutions in the cloud… it’s for your home. (btw my day job is basically a cloud architect) I want this stuff running on iron or virtual as close to the house as possible…

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8

I seem to recall one of the developers espousing exactly that in one of the recent live streams.

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9
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10

That was it. Thanks.

2 Likes
11

As written at the bottom of Franck’s article, I also want to Keep It Simple Stupid.

I’ve had quite a few bad experiences with unstable hardware, both storage and boards, and it usually happens when I’m away (Murphy’s law?). When it happens, I’m usually away and can’t fix it. The WAF factor is considerably lowered when this kind of stuff happens.

To solve hardware instability, I wish for a system that is at least moderately available, but still not Enterprise level 99.999%. Just enough so that it can handle that the Raspberry Pi dies. I want it to fix itself hands-off for when I’m away. I, for one, don’t think this simple wish is something that falls into the realm of “The enterprise smart home syndrome”.

Having zero interest in making smart home systems slightly highly available is just fine, but working against people who have an interest in this and even naming a syndrome after them I find is not helpful at all.

A container clustering solution is often quite OK to manage for people who work in IT, but it doesn’t need a full kubernetes cluster to have a fail-over feature. Having a pair of Raspberry Pi’s running in hot-spare mode is something that should be possible/feasible within the realm of non-enterprise smart homes.

It’s great for that time you’re away traveling and the rest of the family is still at home and the RPi breaks down.

A KISS High Available solution should in my opinion be something that the Home Assistant developers should welcome. :slight_smile:

12

ox·​y·​mo·​ron

: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness)

broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements

13

H aha, of course you’re right, there is no such thing as a simple answer to this problem. :joy: However there are more and less complicated solutions to this problem, and they are all at least a little bit complicated.

Still, ignoring the fact that hardware dies, and having zero solutions to the problem is also not good enough for a lot of us. This is problem exists for everyone, whether we’re working in IT or not. It’s usually the people working in IT that have the skills to try to fix this problem.

We can try to fix it in a more complicated or less complicated way, and the solution is quite often less complicated when built into the software instead of added later by external methods.

14

I’ve been running Home Assistant on a single-node cluster since April, and I see real value in the community creating a Helm chart and possibly a few CRDs. We could always build it ourselves and make it work—I’m happy to contribute to that effort. It doesn’t need to be an officially supported solution; anyone interested can collaborate, and we can help each other out.

As history has shown many times: build it, and they will come.

Footnote:
For context, my setup includes NFS storage, Zigbee2MQTT, Matter, and the new ZBT2 acting as an OpenThread border router. I also run Mosquitto, InfluxDB 2, AirConnect, and manage all secrets using External Secrets integrated with Bitwarden.

1 Like
15

I have a lot of small pieces of hardware (mostly old laptops) that i’d like to use to deploy apps that are currently addons. Having the central management platform of homeassistant to pull all the management of these tools onto one place would have benefits.

I don’t have one piece of hardware that would be able to host all the addons, especially with the current VM deployment requirements, so being able to span multiple pieces of hardware that I’ve cobbled together would be great.

I work with Kubernetes for a living and would be interested in looking at whatever you have come up with so far, and contributing where I can.