I’ve been running HA on an old Raspberry Pi 2 for about a year now. In the past couple of days, I’ve starting having issues with portions of HA not responding. There are times when the dashboard is functional, but going to Settings → Integrations will not load. I get the same thing on logs, software updates, and a lot of other important areas. When I was briefly able to see the logs, it didn’t have anything of use as I had just rebooted and the logs reset.
There may be a configuration issue at this point, but I also think I need a new server with the amount of stuff it’s doing. I’d love to buy a Pi 4, but obviously have been unable to find one. I have a Mac Mini M1 that I use as my primary machine. Would running HA on a virtual machine on that computer be my best bet? Are there other reasonably priced options for dedicated HA servers?
Take a look at the article I posted here and this thread for some other hardware ideas.
I’ve never owned any raspberry pi. I started running home assistant on a Mac mini- but I installed Ubuntu on it and ran home assistant in docker. Not sure how mac os would handle a VM, but it is listed as a supported install if you go that way.
For me with the mac mini, The usb devices started randomly disconnecting, so I got a used dell optiplex on ebay to replace it. It’s running well on that now. Like the linked article says, there are tons of second hand pcs from office environments for sale out there.
The nice thing is that home assistant runs on almost anything. An old laptop lying around where you install Home assistant as the os can work too. And, you have a built in battery backup in a power outage. You can install Home assistant os using these instructions.
You can take a look at his recommendations as well
If you care about longterm stats you better download a (working) backup as fast as possible. In case you don’t have that already anyway. Before the sd card dies completely
The built-in battery backup is a good point. I realized I have an old MacBook collecting dust that might work well for this. I was thinking I might try to get this up and running in Docker, but it seems like that may be a pain to do, and prevents me from installing add-ons?
I may just give it a shot running it in a VM, but the machine @m0wlheld shared looks like a compelling option.
In the meantime, my Pi has been running stably after an update. I’m sure its days are numbered, but I have some time to figure it out.
I strongly recommend running the X86 binary of HAOS on an Intel NUC. You can find Celeron NUCs on eBay for less than $100 and it will put the Raspberry Pi 4 in its dust.
Another candidate that I haven’t tried yet is the BMAX B1 Plus mini PC. They are being dumped for $109 on Amazon because they can’t run Windows 11. But being a dual-core Celeron, it will probably outperform a similar NUC.
For me I like the docker/container route for home assistant. It gives me more control over the machine, uses less resources then a VM, and lets me install whatever other programs i want in the same machine. There are downsides. No addons complicates setup, but almost all addons have an equivalent docker stand alone container you can setup yourself. I posted some more reasons here.
One thing to keep in mind is docker over macos won’t work with Home assistant. Home Assistant container requires host networking mode to support many integrations that use discovery networking protocols. Per the linked docker documentation below, host networking only works with docker on a Linux host.
So if you go this docker route on a Mac, you need to setup the machine to dual boot to Linux. I rarely booted it to macos, and just ran Ubuntu on it. I followed this guide.
I don’t see an issue with starting out with the VM, it just was too resource intense for me with running an NVR on the same machine. It’s more resources for a VM, but easier to setup.
I definitely think it’s better to use the existing hardware you have first though, before buying new equipment, and then pick the best install method based on that hardware and what other programs you want to run in the machine with Home Assistant.
I wasn’t aware of the limitations when running in Docker. That’s definitely a consideration.
I have an old MBP collecting dust, so I could easily dedicate that to HA. The preference is to install HAOS, and I think on a Mac if I want to do that I need to either run a VM on MacOS or Linux.
If this machine is dedicated to HA, is there any reason I’d go with Docker over a VM? And if I went that route, is there any reason to do it in Linux over MacOS?
I have rare virgin fingers- they have never touched a Mac PC.
Which is why I recommend running HAOS on an X86 computer. I have absolutely no clue what would run on a MAC.
I agree with Stephen’s post that if you are only using the machine for home assistant and its addons, and have an x86 pc, installing haos, where home assistant is the actual Os of the machine, is probably your best bet.
However, as far as I know, HAOS won’t work on a Mac. HAOS is based on a stripped down version of linux with minimal drivers, and won’t have the drivers for a Mac.
If using a Mac, I would try the VM route on MACOS first. Its the simplest to setup and that will outperform your existing pi2 setup.
A docker/container install would be an option if you’re running other programs beside home assistant, like in my case an NVR, and the VM is too resource intense. If you’re not running other programs, home assistant container in docker is added complexity for not much benefit, especially on a Mac machine.
