Yes it sounds like it is working as designed. There are pros and cons when using any native integrations.
The bad news is that there a downside to using Home Assistant’s built-in native ZHA integration as Zigbee Gateway solution compared to using any external stand-alone Zigbee Gateway solution is that your whole Zigbee network will be down during restart of Home Assistant or power outage, (which is not the case with example Zigbee2MQTT, Phoscon/deCONZ, and commercial gateways/hubs/bridges such Philips Hue Bridge, IKEA Trådfri Gateway, or SmartThings Hub/Station).
- FYI, it also looks like zigpy developer(s) have begun work on external and stand-alone implementations of ZHA, which if it is the case could make it possible to run the ZHA integration as an external and/or stand-alone application on your local network → Zigpy developer(s) begun work on external and stand-alone implementations of ZHA
The good news if you are using the new Home Assistant 2024.4 release with the latest Home Assistant Operating System (Home Assistant OS) on Raspberry Pi 4 or better hardware then Home Assistant now boots twice as fast and integrations are now loading significantly faster than ever, (where as before one slow integration could prevent other integrations from starting directy). See → https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/04/03/release-20244/#even-more-performance (restarting the whole Home Assistant OS including ZHA should now not take longer than 2-minutes, where the ZHA integration startup time is tha longest part at around 20-30 seconds)
Today there are some other things you can do other than upgrading the hardware that it is running on;
- Configure Zigbee binding inside ZHA between Zigbee wall-switches or remotes and specific Zigbee lights that you absolutly need/want working when Home Assistant is not available, (this has significant other acceptance parameters if and when setup correctly). See → https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#binding-and-unbinding
- Add even more “known good” Zigbee Router devices will make your Zigbee network more robust as devices do not need to talk directly to the Zigbee Coordinator (which among other things makes them use less battery as messages do not need to get resent), see → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference + optimizing using Zigbee Router devices (repeaters/extenders) to get best possible range and coverage
- Add a small UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) to your Home Assistant OS installation so that it still have some battery power even when have a short power outage → Uninterruptible power supply - Wikipedia (This is usually a great idea for Home Assistant and Ethernet + WiFi in any smart home solution regardless and since a majority of power outages only last a few minutes you can normally get far on a less expensive UPS with a small UPS)