Comment by randusername
9 hours ago
I also feel overwhelmed with HA homelab stuff.
HA on my RPI is just not reliable, requiring a reboot 4-6 times a year for reasons I don't understand. Frustration at being in the literal dark doesn't translate to the right mindset to root cause.
What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable virtualization, but so much of the resources online are from folks that are homelabing maximalists.
I feel the same temptation as parent to create a spartan solution.
If you are at all comfortable with Linux system administration, manually setting up one or a handful of KVM/qemu powered virtual machines is not actually that hard at all (in my experience). If you like a GUI to guide your initial steps, "virt-manager" is pretty okay. I've been running 3-5 virtual machines for several years now based on a pretty vanilla Ubuntu Linux install (Debian would work just fine as well).
Now I do like a challenge every now and then, so I'm currently setting up Proxmox to gain live migrations and high availability for virtual machines, because I've become quite dependent on all of these services in virtual machines actually running successfully :-) even in the face of eventual hardware failure (like what happened to me in the past months).
IMO Linux system administration, KVM/Qemu, Docker, and virtual machines, and third-party tools in general are not something that should be involved in smart light bulb/sensor/pump etc management.
Task for an RTOS or no OS IMO. Or a single executable that runs on any OS without config. Should be simple, fast, "just work".
exactly. Its stunning it has to be like this.
I got myself a NUC. It's been worth it: tiny, has 16 GB of memory and 504 days of uptime.
I have servers for running VMs and containers but I felt like it would be nice to have this one as a separate device. It's also easy to plug in radio devices.
I have had the opposite experience; I have an old trash intel NUC with a decent SSD and a moderate amount of RAM and it runs several services (on proxmox).
- Smokeping - Nginx proxy manager (with tailscale and - copyparty - home assistant - regular samba fileserver
The minimum viable setup is the Home Assistant Green. I run it on a slightly better ODroid, since the green did not exist at the time. Any heavy task, like using Ollama, are passed over to my far more main computer.
Same. The complexity of HA also leaves my family with a bus factor of one re: keeping the lights on.
> What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable virtualization
Get a nuc or a mini pc: i5-8500 or better (used, ebay https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic... for a baseline of what's out there)
Ram is your friend (but prices are gross). Dont be cheap on storage.
Get an external USB drive (3/2/1 rule).
Install proxmox on said device.
Use the proxmox community scripts to install HAOS as a VM. https://community-scripts.org/categories?category=operating-...
Pass through what ever USB devices you need (or spring for POE devices ).
Enjoy your HA setup.
Proxmox is the way to go here. Once you have a working install dont over commit before you learn to: 1. back up, 2. restore. These should both be local and remote (HA can enable this to various sources).
As a bonus you now have a runtime (proxmox) that can do tons of other things (see the whole community scripts link).
I have been running HA for years now, and this method makes things a pleasure and is easy (at least if you're a nerd) and cheap (the solutions are lower power).
An enthusiastic two thumbs up to this approach. It's exactly what I run at home that has been working solidly. I run on an N100, which is just a hair smaller than an i5-8500, with 32GB DRAM and a 1TB SSD (total overkill). I keep it under proxmox; the box also runs my unifi SDN controller, pihole, and a linux VM for various little services. Two USB dongles for z-wave / zigbee / matter (because I'm a glutton for punishment). Backed up to a NAS. It's fast, easy, and has been very reliable.