I have HA running on a MacMini, and it’s fine, but it seems that the vast majority of HA users are using some platform other than a Mac/PC. Given the fact that so many homes already have these computers, why NOT use them? Is it because you want HA operating on a machine that’s not also doing other things?
In my case, that Mac is only a Plex/Roon/HA server, so it’s essentially a task-specific computer and not being used for Timmy’s homework and my Beer of the Month calendar, and it handles HA quite well.
I recently turned a MacBook Air M1 with a broken screen into a sort of home server. It runs a NAS, Tailscale Exit Node and Subnet router.
It would make a lot of sense for me to run HA on MacOS instead of having a seperate server. I realize I could run it in virtual box, but that is not exactly a good way to manage it - I’d much rather see either a native version
I can see that there are complications to running natively on an ARM based Mac … but it would still be nice anyway.
First of all, the price of such device. You can perfectly run HA on a device that you can buy for 10$ used.
Secondly, price of running. MacMini should be fine in this regard, but desktop PCs usually waste an order of magnitude more power on idle (which is the state it will be most of the time). And for a device that runs 24/7/365 this matters.
If you already have a PC or a Mac that runs 24/7, than there is absolutely no reason why you couldn´t run HA off it.
I ran my HA on a Windows machine in a VM from Vmware for the last 5 years absolutely not problem whatsoever.
As for the people that will shout “…but you are wasting electricity…” :
My PC is a passively cooled built, that runs an I5, and it uses 17 Watts if I am not using it for anything else than HA.
And yes, that is propably 10 watts more than a Rhasperry - but do the math people!
10 Watts is around 88kWh per year - at a cost of 30 cent, we are talking 26.- bucks PER YEAR!
And in countries where you are heating your house in the winter months, it is not even wasted money, because it helps to keep your man cave warm (just a tiny bit )
I run 2 instances of HA on 2012 mac mini’s at different locations.
I started on a Raspberry pi3, then an intel NUC, then Mac with Virtual box, and now Mac with VMware.
Mac with VMware is my favourite so far. I can remote desktop to the Mac with zero tier and sort out major problems after updates, and I even migrated the system from virtual box to VMware remotely.
Each time I upgraded platforms it was mainly due to ESPhome updates taking hours. HA runs pretty good ATM and my weekly ESPhome updates only take a couple of hours to compile.
I think I’ll stick to the VM setup as it gives that extra layer of accessibility as opposed to running natively.
Other than some Risc stuff, HA only runs on Macs and PC’s… I don’t get your point.
People try to run on the minimal hardware to save the $10 a year a 24-7 bigger machine would use, but they are (Except for Risc) all macs and PC’s.
Well, I’d avoid something that is still running windows because it is constantly rebooting to load more spyware, so I wouldn’t put it in a windows VM.
+1
I thought really hard about using my windows 11 desktop as sandbox to try out HA before going with a Green. At some level it made sense, it already doesn’t go to sleep because its a dvr endpoint and few other swiss-army-knife functions… plus, its what I know.
I didn’t because of:
Windows now updates and reboots on its own. I get the reasons, but I prefer to boot my HA server when I’m ready and not have HA rebooted unexpectedly. And while rare, there are times those updates don’t recover gracefully. If I’m traveling and the PC dead-stops, I don’t have options other than asking a neighbor to come over, find it, reboot it, etc.
While the w11 pc has enough horsepower to juggle all of those oranges, we have other important desktop functions on it, especially at specific times. It appears I could do most HAOS functions in a vacuum without affecting that desktop work, but didn’t want to find myself painted into a corner someday
I like spending time on the automations for my house and not looking to add server / vm / container management command line tasks to my day. Some enjoy that and I get it, I’m not one of them. With HA green I am several degrees away from that. I know its still going on, but I don’t have to think about it
Adding on to my initial response. While I’d love to see better integration, I am not sure if HA should be the one to have to work around issue with the host OS, but that is big problem I see with both.
On windows, the best virtualization software by far is Hyper-V, BUT Hyper-V doesn’t (really or easily) do USB passthrough. VMWare and VirtualBox do support HA, but not as seamless with the OS (things like networking, memory management, Type 2 vs Type 1) and you can’t mix these virtualization technologies (e.g. native Docker only runs with Hyper-V).
On Mac - while there is a virtualization framework built in, there is not really a native hypervisor (although I need to investigate UTM more) and the virtualization options available are not fully featured like Hyper-V or Proxmox. At least the hypervisor options do mix with Docker. With Docker in mind, think the key question is why doesn’t HA support
Is that HA’s problem to work around OS virtualization issues, but both Windows and MacOS reasonably support Docker … so the question is should HA support these with a supported Docker for each OS - and maybe have better support for add-ons within Docker.
Even though I might want to run HA on MacOS, I don’t think it is a particular priority for HA to make better interoperabilty with Windows or MacOS with all the other options available.
I’m using UTM on the Mac and, so far, it’s been fine. To reiterate, I’m doing this because the Mac was already there. Certainly if I was starting from scratch I’d more strongly consider the less expensive options.
I had a MacBook Air m1 with a broken screen that I’ve turned into a home server (file and media sharing, Tailscale exit node and subnet router) so not worth a lot. It idles at around 7 watts
I have 2 proxmox servers - one that operates 24x7 for home assistant only, the other where I have an older, inefficient machine (100w idle) where I run my last windows machine.
So that is why I am looking to move HA to Mac. The one thing holding me back is that I am a node-red user and I think it works better on x86 vs arm.
)