Home Assistant - Docker vs Home Assistant OS

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allio

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#3036760 15-Feb-2023 09:35

Handle9:

I've got a Lenovo M92p with a 4th generation core i5, 16GB Ram and an SSD lying around. I'm considering migrating to Home Assistant OS and using this. As a bonus it'll give me the ability to monitor the Unraid server and run backups to the server etc.

Proxmox. 100%.

A HA VM will use about 1% of the M92p's resources, leaving plenty to play with for other stuff. And you can use all the handy backup/snapshotting features of Proxmox. It would be such a waste to install HA on bare metal on that box.

reven

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#3036867 15-Feb-2023 10:16

I started with docker version, but too many things wanted plugins. You could do some things with manual docker containers and linking, but became a PITA tbh.

So i switched to a virtual machine in proxmox. Much better experience with it.

I installed Frigate on my unRAID box though and use frigate proxy to home assistant. Easier to save recordings directly on my NAS.

Handle9

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#3037184 15-Feb-2023 18:34

I think I'll virtualise HA on the m92p and see how it goes. I installed proxmox and had a play last night, there's a pretty significant learning curve by the looks.

Handle9

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#3037343 15-Feb-2023 19:51

I did a bit more reading and it looks like VMs are interchangeable between Proxmox and Unraid.

Maybe I'll start with a VM on the Unraid server and if I'm not happy with performance I can transfer it to Proxmox on the M92p

mattenz

190 posts

Master Geek

#3038146 17-Feb-2023 13:36

I've got everything running in containers on an Unraid server. I have never noticed a lag in releases, but I haven't been looking. I almost think it's a good thing, you can keep an ear out for the howls as something else is broken, then stop it updating!

Silvrav

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#3038165 17-Feb-2023 14:24

Have my HA running on a hyper V VM on my server - I run some beefy HA scripts, cameras etc.

but ya here is my usuage from HA.

32gb ram on a xeon E5-2650 v2 8 core CPU. assigned a full core to HA.

out of interest here is my "demand" according to hyper V manager.

Handle9

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#3039135 19-Feb-2023 21:30

I ended up migrating over to a Proxmox VM in the end.

The migration took a couple of hours and everything is up and running. There's going to be a big learning curve with Proxmox but it's something new to learn which is fun.

Thanks to everyone for their help

Equinox IT

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michaelmurfy

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#3039140 19-Feb-2023 21:54

Proxmox is great and awesome for home use.

Did you use the installer script I mentioned that automates the whole process?

Also a couple of things:

Empty out /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ via SSH (rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*)

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to have the following:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib

# PVE pve-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com,
# NOT recommended for production use
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription

# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib

Run "apt update" to update your repos, then "apt upgrade" to upgrade everything (using the community repos) then lastly once done run:

sed -Ezi.bak "s/(Ext.Msg.show\(\{\s+title: gettext\('No valid sub)/void\(\{ \/\/\1/g" /usr/share/javascript/proxmox-widget-toolkit/proxmoxlib.js && systemctl restart pveproxy.service

to get rid of that annoying "no license" prompt in the web console.

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Handle9

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#3039156 19-Feb-2023 22:42

I did use that script, as well as the post installation script on the same GitHub. It made things really quite straightforward although I may have learnt more doing it from scratch. For now I’m happy just to have it up and running ;)

I’ve added a lot of containers onto my Unraid server l, and docker has become a bit flaky, so it’s good to get the core house infrastructure off it it. Next step is moving the vpn server off as well so all the stuff I have to have reliably running is off it.

Handle9

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#3039157 19-Feb-2023 22:43

I should add I was relieved to have zigbee2mqtt transfer straight across without many problems. It would have been a disaster pairing 30 devices from scratch.

michaelmurfy

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#3039176 20-Feb-2023 01:15

For VPN, what I've done is just installed a small Debian VM on Proxmox (it only needs 512mb of ram or so) then installed PiVPN in Wireguard mode (https://www.pivpn.io/)

PiVPN adds nice automation scripts so you can add and remove Wireguard connections with ease. My PiVPN server is currently sitting on a Proxmox node running on a small HP Thinclient so it doesn't require too much CPU either. This VM can easily max out my upstream bandwidth.

Other apps to investigate is Tailscale (https://tailscale.com/) as well as Zerotier (https://www.zerotier.com/). Tailscale I have only recently started using but the documentation is really good and it is based off Wireguard so runs really quick.

LXC containers on Proxmox are great, but also have some limitations (for example Wireguard + Docker will not run without enabling potential security holes). My Plex / Jellyfin instances run in LXC and I've enabled Intel Quicksync passthrough to the containers for hardware transcoding. This means that these containers have hard resource limits (in terms of memory usage etc) but also use far less resources than a full blown VM.

Depending on how IO intensive a docker container is (all my storage is still on my UnRaid server and I use NFS to mount storage over to Proxmox) I may opt to run more intensive stuff like downloaders or backup utilities directly on the UnRaid server. Everything else runs on a Debian VM in Proxmox (you can use Portainer or Yacht to make things easier. I personally just use docker-compose files).

But with Proxmox you've got both VM's and LXC containers to play around with. For LXC templates there is template management built into the WebUI normally under the local mount (or any other mount you have with CT Template storage enabled on):

Under these templates also there is a fair few Turnkey Linux appliances you can run with minimal configuration. I've tried a few to quickly fire something up and they work well. If you're exposing something with a web interface to the internet I'd recommend using Cloudflare Tunnel to secure it.

Have fun!

Handle9

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#3039180 20-Feb-2023 02:10

Anything exposed to the internet currently runs through cloudflare and a reverse proxy. I'd like to get Adguard, reverse proxy and vpn off the unraid machine and leave that for serving media and files.

I was just playing around with PiVPN and it seems to be pretty nice.

Handle9

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#3040615 22-Feb-2023 18:48

I'm finding Proxmox a bit much for me. I'm really limited in my linux knowledge and Unraid has spoiled me by hiding most of the configuration behind their GUI. I really just to easily run VMS and docker containers, I'm wondering if there's an easier way to do this.

I actually have a spare unraid basic license from a backup server that isn't being used at the moment so considering just throwing uraid onto the m92p but it does seem a waste.

mark0x01

6 posts

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#3064496 17-Apr-2023 13:06

Low power consumption was more important for me so I moved to using docker on a Pi 3 with Devuan as the OS (debian without systemd)

Performance is acceptable, and it was easy to maintain and upgrade than running it in the OS.

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