I’m moving over from a RPI3 to an Intel NUC. Online and in the community I read a lot of opinions on how to set it up. Some guys running a VM on Proxmox, others say it’s overkill, and introducing an extra layer of complexity. I’m doubting what I should do? Go the Proxmox with a VM running Ubuntu and Docker. Or just install Ubuntu Server with Docker on the bear metal? Any advise?
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If you want to install supervised in a VM use Debian not Ubuntu! Personally I’m not a fan of Proxmox for a bunch of reasons but it’s your call and many will disagree with me. I just run a supervised install on Debian and have for a few years.
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Depends a bit on what you want to do with the NUC, if it’s only for Home Assistant, then Proxmox is overkill in my opinion and David’s suggestion is perfectly fine. However if you want to use the NUC for other stuff as well, it may be useful to have Proxmox. I use Proxmox because I run other things on the NUC besides HA and also a VM for testing HA stuff.
What I really like about Proxmox is that I can automatically backup the whole VM every night (takes like 10-15 min for 25 GB) and if I have an issue I can restore the VM and I’m back where I left off in a matter of 1-2 mins, even if the NUC would get bricked completely, I buy a new one, install Proxmox, restore the VM and I’m back where I left off.
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But I can also do that with running other Docker containers in my Ubuntu right? For example if I want to run Plex on my NUC I can run it in a separate Docker Container next to HA. Creating a separate VM for that feels like a lot of overhead?
When you replace Proxmox with Ubuntu server and VM with Docker Container in the above text, isn’t that just ‘the same’ in terms of usability and being up and running in no time?
Anyway I think I don’t go for the Proxmox hypervisor setup, but just install Ubuntu Server with Docker/Portainer on the NUC
Yes, you can do this.
But I for example run a separate VM with a second HA instance, which I use to test new versions or other things before adding it to production. I also have a VM to test different linux flavors and tinker with some stuff.
As I said, it all depends on your needs.
If I were only running HA and related services, the NUC would be way too overpowered and a waste of resources.
Not exactly, you’d need to configure the host OS, install docker again, add all the shell scripts, cronjobs or other stuff running on the host OS. The VM backup is a full backup of the complete system including all config etc.
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Proxmox is really nice.
Light, easy to setup, reliable, you can install and run many different things, you can backup/restore easily (even easier / more efficient now with the new promox backup server!), you can easily create a cluster with 2 nodes for failover or even high availability,…
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I’ve been running HA on proxmox for some time and the following script was very useful:
I love the ability to safely use proxmox for trialling lots of other things without affective my HA system.
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I’ve done: HA on Ubuntu, HASSOS on Virtualbox, HA on Raspi, and now HASSOS on proxmox. This one is the best. I have proxmox running as the OS, which allows me to run a few different virtual machines. HA runs as the HassOS virtual appliance (used the whiskerz script above) and it has been completely flawless. I try to only run home automation stuff within the virtual appliance using docker. Other virtual machines run ubuntu for things like plex, caddy server and my ubiquity controller, but always outside the HA virtual appliance. This whole things makes backups/redundancy super simple.
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I also went from a Pi4 to Proxmox on a NUC (and used whiskerz script). Given the relative increase in compute power, it felt like a bit of waste to run just HA on this box.
So I have some other VMs which run my Legrande lighting proxy, another HA Development environment and a few other odds and ends. As others have noted, this makes backups really simple.
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I am running a Debian server onJ1900 processor running lots of services only in Docker, including graylog, unifi, nas, home assistant and it beats my Pi4 by far in speed. I had to up the memory to 16Gb when I added all the DB’s but still no performance issue.
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Nice, but I’m automating my home, not some high tech production environment 
My point is, you don’t need Proxmox if you want to run more than just HA on your NUC. You need Proxmox if you want to run multiple services in separate VM’s. I think I’m going for the solution @PD75 implemented, but then with Ubuntu Server.
If you are going to run other stuff (and trust me you’ll find a need 
) then IMO Proxmox is the way forward.
At work I have set up two 5 node Proxmox clusters for our systems in different sites, and cannot fault it for the ease of virtualisation and the performance.
A major plus to me for proxmox is the fact that unlike VMWare, you can run VMs and LXC containers.
At home, I have things like mqqt, node red, pihole, mariadb and a virtenv home assistant in LXC containers. The footprint is tiny compared to a docker VM and each one is like a separate VM, but using such a small amount of resources from the hypervisor
Each to their own though, and it depends a lot on use, and geekdom to some extent
I do have a separate docker instance that I run a few containers, but I like the LXCs for the fact they feel like a real ubuntu machine - I can ssh, I can reboot, I can set up mail etc. Proxmox also backs them up in a few minutes.
I have recently installed a dev home assistant using the qcow2 OS and i must say I am quite impressed with it, and I would be tempted to maybe one day move my HA over to it, if only to not have to worry about dependancies (I have just had to upgrade python from 3.7 to 3.8).
Good luck with whatever way you go
mb
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When your proxmox node will crash while you’re away on a 5-days business trip with your wife and kids @home, you will wish to have add more 250€ for a second redundant node ! 
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Running HA in a LXC container is another possible solution. But I need bluetooth, and thats not working in LXC. So not an option for me.
Thanks, I think I have a clear overview of all possible options and how I will move forward
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I went from a RPi4 using HA supervised install through docker on raspian then went to a NUC with Windows 10 as the base OS, with VirtualBox running multiple VM’s (ubuntu being one of them) and find it much better. I have a few services running in the Ubuntu VM that communicate with my HassOS VM.
Just wanted to share my experience since I havent tried Proxmox, although I really do want to test it out. I actually have proxmox set-up on a second drive, for testing out sometime in the future.
I’m using cheap aftermarket terminal HP T630 AMD 4x2.0GHz, 4GB RAM, 240GB SSD as a host for Proxmox. It has 7 USB ports, one of them internal. Two on front are USB 3.0. It has also two M.2 ports for SSD’s! 2280 and 2242. You can MAX it with 32GB of RAM.
I’ve decided to buy it instead of Rpi4, because of the price, no cooling problems, zero problems with SSD disk, RAM and overall it’s a normal PC with BIOS where you can enable Auto ON after power outage. BTW it’s connected by USB to APC Back-UPS ES 700 and using NUT package[Proxmox is Debian] it shutdown safely.
The HassOS mostly sleeps on CPU. Real photos attached. Since the T630 is fanless the noise level is zero. It sits on my desk. For Zigbee I use flashed Sonoff ZBBridge so I don’t need to put any USB device there
https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t630/
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I have also decided to move on with Proxmox. And installed an Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS on a VM with Docker, Portainer and Home Assistant Supervised. I know it’s a not supported setup (rigth now), but I like to fiddle around with my host VM, and I’m an Ubunty guy. Later on I will try to install the (whizkers007) HassOS option as well to see how that works.
For now I’m pretty happy with my setup and impressed with Proxmox and the usability of it. Thank you all for sharing your info and insights!
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I have been using Proxmox for some time and find it great to run HA and I also run Plex and other apps on a separate Proxmox VM. I used to run on a Pi 3 but Proxmox is way faster and I then repurposed the Pi 3 which runs only the Zwave and ZigBee networks which keeps it separate from the main HA install. This works very well and has proved much more reliable.
As others have said it is a breeze to do full backups.
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What do you mean by this? You run a separate instance of HA on the Pi3 just for Zwave and ZigBee?
Probably OpenZWave and zigbee2MQTT. I basically did the same, have the Pi 3 that was previously running HA and use it now for ZigBee (DeCONZ) and Z-Wave (OpenZWave Daemon), no additional HA instance needed.
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