just started with Home Assistant, running on an old Raspberry PI2 that was unused at home in a drawer. It works for me for now, but I am aware that this might not be the best choice for the future.
Now I need to buy a new Windows 11 PC that will rarely be used (surfing, Office, sorting and viewing photos, etc.), I am thinking of a MiniPC (or server (??)). The MiniPC should consume as less power as possible if idle and in general be silent.
Now, what I have in mind, is that the MiniPC is only used for Windows applications a couple of hours (if at all) per month, is there a way to have Home Assistant running normally on that machine and only occasionally I boot (additionally?) Windows and HASS is continuously running (with less resources, perhaps) in the “background”.
Somewhere also I read, that it is not advisable to have Win11 running 24/7 and HASS in a Virtual Machine, due to stability topics and, of course, power consumption.
IMHO your best long term bet is to run a miniPC with a hypervisor. Then you can have HAOS, WIIndows 10 and Windows 11 running in parallel or whenever you want. You can even have Android x86, or MacOS running as well as any other Linux distro. All you need is hardware which supports virtualisation (AMD or Intel 4-core/8-threads), ideally 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD (preferably nVME).
I suggest Proxmox VE for hypervisor but your preferences may vary.
Proxmox isn’t really an option, as you require another machine to access the virtual desktop(s)
If it needs to run under W11, I suggest VMWare Player (or better Workstation, but that ain’t free), or other wise VirtualBox (but I have bad exeperiences with that regarding stability)
I must agree with aceindy, even thou it’s with mixed feelings, however i have tried Proxmox, and beside the lack of GUI, then Proxmox ain’t that straight forward when installing various OS, add disks etc. etc. and maintenance etc.
So spite the fact that Windows(Microsoft) from time to time force reboot of a device, and in my opinion have to many “restart-updates” … thou HA has actually become even worse, in that matter.
HA in VMWare Player is very stable, easy USB support/bridging, of all or individual and Bluetooth etc, very easy to maintain, backup etc. … And for that matter, with suggested 4/8 Core-(8-threads) , one can even install an Android, and a Linux w/Apache in 2 other separate VM’s
But buying a new 4-8core/8threads 8 / 16 GB-Ram isn’t cheap, thou there are lots of used/older laptops with these specs ( with laptop you also get the monitor, keyboard and battery-backup ) , and they are quit silence
I would buy an used Dell Optiplex Micro, HP Elitedesk G800 Mini or equivalent, should be possible for about 100USD/EUR.
Then depending on your skill level, I would probably go with the HAOS installation method. If you run into constraints into what you want installed (that the addons can’t provide, for me it was a fully-fledged Plex setup), then there are other options. But keep it simple from the start and progress from there.
Then I would use a separate system for my personal needs, as to ensure high availability on your home infrastructure. Like others have pointed out, it would be less than ideal if Windows updates took your HA down even for a short while.
I repurposed my Pi for a separate DNS, and I am considering also using it as a separate MQTT instance.
Hello…
I started HA a few years ago on Raspberry pi3 than moved to Pi4 and finally to a NUC, first with HA natively installed on the NUC (too big machine for HA only), than regrouping various software running on other hardware into the NUC using Proxmox…
I am now running Home Assistant on a NUC (NUC8i5BEK2) using Proxmox 7.3… On the same machine, I am running: WireGuard (VPN solution), Icinga2 (network monitoring tool) as containers as well as Home Assistant, Windows 10 (to be accessed remotely) and Windows 11 (as test machine), the last three are installed as virtual machines… I have 32 GB of memory (but using only a little bit more than 50% of it for the time being) and a 500 Gb NVMe SSD…
On home assistant container, I have attached two USB devices : a RFXTrx box and a serial modem (Huawei E3531)…
Environment is running perfectly… and was easy to install for me but I am in IT (there is a lot of video available on the web explaining how to install software on Proxmox). I am saving the containers/VM backups on a Synology NAS (quick to backup and easy to restore).
As mentionned, you need another machine to access the containers or virtual machines… Icinga2, WireGuard and Home Assistant are accessed using a browser on another machine and the Windows environments are accessed using VNC Viewer installed on my laptop.
It’s awesome that you’re exploring options to enhance your Home Assistant setup. While I can’t provide direct advice on your Home Assistant setup, I do understand your concerns about optimizing power usage and stability.
For your new Windows 11 MiniPC, you might consider checking out windows 10 product key reddit to ensure you’re getting the best value. It’s great that you’re thinking about efficient resource allocation and stability.
Remember, striking the right balance between running Windows and Home Assistant can lead to a smooth and efficient setup. Your approach of occasionally booting Windows while keeping Home Assistant running in the background sounds well thought out.
You can find many mini-PCs on eBay for under $100, though I prefer the Intel NUC. However, I can’t advise on dual-purposing since I run HAOS on its own NUC, and Ubuntu Linux on another. I like to keep things simple.