What or where should I install Home Assistant OS to?

Installation
21

Okay, okay, just to think of one tinny thing here.
And I say this as a system administrator for so many years. I’ve seen the transition from centralised to de-centralised computing and back again. A nuc seems overkill but think of this. Eventually you need a few port to control stuff. Things expand and functions are added to HA. Also this nuc is controlling your house, if not your life. It must be stable, hassle free and reliable. You don’t want the risk of rebuilding a new server with many containers for whatever what. Yes, you can rollback containers. But be honest, it is dark in your house and you want HA back asap. Your wife is nagging that x or y isn’t working anymore. Just explain then that you first have to get a few containers online. At first it seems efficient to have a single point of failure (your pc/nuc/server) below all your applications you can’t live without. But even in upcoming 2025 hardware is still gonna fail sooner or later.

I have a spare nuc next of mine HA nuc. I have pre-installed HA on is. If the main nuc fail it is just restore the latest backup, plug all the cables in (i got many of these) and I am back before my coffee is cold

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22

I have an old laptop also with proxmox (in a cluster). So if anything on my production nuc/proxmox fails, I can start my home up in a few seconds on the other proxmox node.
But I totallty understand it is not for everyone, hence my suggestion to look at some videos and decide from there :slight_smile:

23

You missed my point. Your hardware brakes down so you can not start a new node with out replacing your hardware and building everything from the ground up.

24

ok, sorry, but I was explaining my situation if my nuc totally fails, so I thought it was relevant.

25

No problem. I am glad that we both provided the threat starter with many points of view.

26

I was lucky enough that my laptop (Dell) had battery management options, similar to modern tablets & mobiles.
I just set it to “Always plugged in” and it keeps the battery charged just enough that it only drops by 1% every couple of days. Once it goes down to ~30% it charges up to 90% and repeats the cycle.

1 Like
27

Thanks a bunch for the overwhelming information. But since I’m brand new to HA, my basic question is, is there a option to install or use HAOS without virtual box, vm, or installing on top of an existing OS like Windows, Linux, or MacOS? Can HAOS be installed on a bare metal box? If not and I decided to go with NUC, that means I have to install MS Windows OS, correct? Then I have to install some sort of virtualization software and finally install the HAOS. Do I understand this correctly?

28

Yes. That’s the OS part of HAOS.

If you bare metal a NUC. Look at the instructions for haos generic x64 and make sure you turn off secure boot

1 Like
29

Nice, thanks!

30

Do I need a Windows to prepare the installation for a bare-metal HAOS? I only have Macs.

31

You better read the sugested pages first.
There is a very clear install guide, even with pictures

1 Like
32

Any computer will do: Simplest way is this: install balena etcher (or similar) on your PC/MAC, download x86-64 iso (or bin…) HA file, burn that iso on SSD with that program (to make it bootable), insert ssd into NUC and wait.