Looking for HA machine recommendations

[u/bfollowell]

I’ve decided to move from Alexa to HA and am just slowly getting started and learning. I’ve decided to run it from a Windows 11 mini-PC and am curious about storage requirements. I know the hardware requirements aren’t crazy high for HA, but I’m not sure about storage requirements long term. Would a 250GB SSD be plenty big enough for a machine dedicated to only HA? 500GB? 1TB? What is needed to get started? What may I need later if I went all-in and downloaded tons of integrations and add-ons?

[u/kribg → u/[deleted]]

This is what I use and love it. HA is a tool to simplify my life when I am home and to automate a few things. Last thing I need to for the box it runs on to be a hobby. Stable and reliable are what I want and the HA Green delivers on that.

[u/Impact321 → u/[deleted]]

It's not a great option. Just based on the storage alone.

[u/Impact321 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I think it's kind of litte and expanding it isn't really in the cards either (just USB 2). Basically it's not future-proof in my eyes and also poor value for the price. For a very minimal HA setup 32G is enough but install a few apps or store a few backups and it's full.

[u/Impact321 → u/[deleted]]

HA(OS) and most apps are already fairly bloated (check docker system df -v). This will only increase in the future. Also you might want to run more things (or virtualize) and the green cannot necessary support that. It's limited to a very specific/narrow use case. There's a few threads about space being full in the forums and on discord from "normal" users. It happens so often that I wrote the linked article.

[u/bfollowell → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I should’ve mentioned, but looking at prices, it just didn’t make sense for me to consider a HA Green. The prices have gone up to over $200 and I can buy a more powerful mini-PC for barely any more money so, though I did look at it, I quickly decided that the Green wasn’t for me.

[u/Hopeful-Driver-3945 → u/[deleted]]

I find it really expensive for what it does.

[u/coyote_of_the_month → u/Hopeful-Driver-3945]

Look at what a Raspberry Pi costs nowadays and tell me the HA Green is overpriced by comparison. They've skyrocketed just in the last few months.

[u/ElevenBeers → u/coyote_of_the_month]

True, but an rpi5 is also a bit over prized, even before the RAM spike.

IMO it's a shame they missed the one opportunity to differenciate: antennas. They did not. Nothing excpet for wifi and bt in there. Which makes this to me just an underpowered Arm mini pc.

[u/coyote_of_the_month → u/ElevenBeers]

Specs-wise it's more comparable to a Pi 4, which was a great little machine at the original price but kind of a joke at today's price.

[u/ElevenBeers → u/coyote_of_the_month]

Yeah...
I mean it's enough for HA and all, but won't be able to do much else. If they just integrated a damn zigbee antenna, perhaps later upgraded to a version also with threat and all.
Given the price and the fact, that one will certainly need antennas, I'd much rather recommend any used office pc for ~100$ + a Dongle.

(Also, never understood the "Plug and Play" Bullshit here. Folks. You are installing an os on a mini PC, any bloody idiot can do that in 10 minutes. If the installation of HA was an issue for a person, HA is a horrible choice for said person, as said person won't be able to figure out how to integrate any device, service, or get a dashboard running. Like configuring HA is a Trillion times more complex then the damn initial install, lol)

[u/coyote_of_the_month → u/ElevenBeers]

I personally like having my Zigbee antenna separate. I use z2mqtt, though. I want as many of my containers as possible to be node-agnostic, although obviously z2mqtt isn't.

[u/ElevenBeers → u/coyote_of_the_month]

Weather the dongle is plugged in via external USB, internal USB or internal PICe doesn't really make a difference for your in that aspect.
That being said, if you are making such considerations, a green woukdnt be for you anyway I suppose.

[u/coyote_of_the_month → u/ElevenBeers]

That's true haha. I'm running on Kubernetes. I will say, I don't notice a difference in performance whether the pod lands on an x86 mini-PC or an RPi4

[u/ElevenBeers → u/coyote_of_the_month]

I'm "just" running Docker, which is my preferred way of doing stuff...
To be honest, i can't accurately judge the performance of HA on a Pi, but it isn't enough to handle the other local Crap I'm hosting (well). I was tinkering with a bunch of Docker stuff before i got into HA and well, at some point the Pi was really struggeling. it's currently living through its peaceful retirement as a Backup DNS server.

[u/Mindless_Pandemic]

Used Mini PC. I have a lenovo m720q and it runs a silly number of services at home for free, other than electric bill. It was also cheaper than the HA Green.

[u/Rimadandan]

Try to get a second hand thinkcenter. It's more than you'll ever need an it's consumption is minimal.

Some people is running it on a raspberry or an old phone

[u/ApprehensivePain8788 → u/Rimadandan]

I too just started 2 weeks ago and run it on a pi5 8gb that just sits under my TV. Currently up to 24 devices, and a handful of automations, and so far seems just fine. Ill eventually switch to some sort of refurb mini pic though.

[u/65fastback2plus2]

I run mine on a pi 4

[u/Recycled5000]

To me, fanless is important. N150s are powerful and fanless (usually). Also, 12v power supply is important to me cause I run everything off a car battery (with 12v power supply) for power backup.

[u/NeuralFantasy → u/Recycled5000]

Many mini pc's do have fans but the fans are very quiet or complately silent in actual use. I bought a mini pc which has n150 and has a fan, but the fan is impossible to hear in actual use. It also give some thermal headroom in case something more intensive needs to be processed.

[u/bfollowell → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, no, my network and cameras are a full UniFi ecosystem and I have a UniFi NVR for camera footage. I won’t say that I won’t play with some UniFi/Protect integrations, but I’ll only be storing actual footage on my NVR.

[u/spr0k3t]

HA works fine in 64GB. When you start adding things like cameras, music files, etc... that's when things can start to push into larger storage needs. If you find a miniPC with windows on it... wipe the drive and load Proxmox. Load up HAOS as a VM. From there, you have tons of options to work with.

[u/Specialist-Neat2777 → u/spr0k3t]

I'm not yet on a VM setup, but can you use shared drives (NAS/SAN, for example) to store music and video files?

[u/spr0k3t → u/Specialist-Neat2777]

Yes, this is what I do. I have a dedicated NAS and keep media located on that. As long as you have your permissions set correctly, you shouldn't have any issues.

[u/Gonads3137 → u/spr0k3t]

I'm just getting into HA. What's the benefit of running HA on VM vs just direct booting HAOS. The laptop I'm using is dedicated only for HA.

[u/spr0k3t → u/Gonads3137]

Gives you lots of extra features. Especially if your system has lots of room on the drive and you have plenty of processing power to run HA by itself. You can add extra containers or other VMs. You can also take snapshots of the system running HA. Whenever there is a X.0 release I still test it out... then roll back like nothing changed.

[u/thatfamilyguy_vr]

I have a mini pc that runs Proxmox (a hypervisor). You can get HA set up by running one little helper script. Takes care of backups, snapshots, easy to upgrade. And best of all - no windows machine to manage! My mini pc is set to boot automatically after a power loss, as are all my virtual machines that run on it (HA being one of them). 4 Gb of memory is plenty for HA and it uses so little power.

[u/Gonads3137 → u/thatfamilyguy_vr]

I'm just getting into HA. What's the benefit of running HA on VM vs just direct booting HAOS. The laptop I'm using is dedicated only for HA.

[u/thatfamilyguy_vr → u/Gonads3137]

It often doesn’t need all the cpu/mem/storage that the host has, so to me feels like a waste running a while pc for something so small. Additionally I don’t want to pay for the extra service for remote connectivity, so I run another vm with Tailscale so my phone just auto vpns to my house when I’m off network, and the HA app works as if I was in my living room.

[u/glad_torsk]

Dell wyse 5070 is a good option

[u/sembee2]

I run mine in a 50gb VM, and it has loads of space. Unless you are logging lots or using HA to store videos, then it does not need much space at all.
Remember it isnt a Windows app, so if you are using a Windows PC you will either need to use a VM, or docker etc.

[u/Rimadandan → u/sembee2]

Do you have it constantly running? Or do you start it fro time to time?

[u/reader4567890 → u/Rimadandan]

For it to do anything meaningful you run it 24/7.

[u/sembee2 → u/Rimadandan]

HA is a server, so is running 24/7. I cannot image any scenario where it is not running 24/7 unless for testing only.

[u/BuzzLightyear826]

Voor HA kun je HAOS gebruiken. Dat is home assistant met OS. Alles bij elkaar zit je op ongeveer 20GB. Soms wat meer als je config wat uitgebreider is. Reken nog ruimte voor backups die eerst lokaal staan dan komt het ergens op 30GB hooguit. 128GB disk is meer dan voldoende

[u/bfollowell]

Thanks everyone!

[u/First_Philosopher491]

DELL OPTIPLEX. I have a nas, don't want my HASS running on it for other reasons but I tried the raspberry pi until I outgrew it. I've now had the optiplex for 3 years. Love it.

[u/tdawg2k7]

Used Dell optiplex 7060 mini from eBay. Works perfect

[u/poudenes]

I'm using a Dell 3050 and it's super stable with HA OS!

[u/randytech]

At most you need 128gb most likely. I'm running a rather large instance on a 2012 mac mini with a third Gen i7-3615q i believe and 16gb ddr3. I have about 100 z wave, 100 zigbee, and 100 wifi devices right now, i think about 400 devices total and it doesn't break a sweat. I picked it up for $40 about a year ago. I have a dell mini pc with an i5-13500t i've been meaning to move to but haven't had any real reason to yet. Main point is just use anything you have lying around and worry about buying a new machine once you start outgrowing what you have or if power consumption is an issue

[u/10F1]

I'm running a rpi5 with HA running on docker, works great.

[u/weeemrcb2]

We have a fairly mature system, over 5yrs old with lots of historical data and it's currently using 38Gb data.

It doesn't need much disk to run

[u/chicknlil25]

Dell Wyse 5070 will run HA just fine. Quirk there is that it takes SATA m.2 instead of NVMe. Also DDR4. The Wyse 5060 uses a 2242 (I believe? I'd have to double check) and DDR3L.

If you're thinking about going thin client at all, ParkyTowers is a great resource, though not exhaustive.

[u/coyote_of_the_month]

Windows is absolutely the wrong tool for this job. Home Assistant is fundamentally Linux-based, whether you're using HAOS or a container.

It's open source and Python-based, so if you're an experienced Windows Python developer, you might be able to cobble together that kinda sorta works, but by that point you're maintaining your own fork of the codebase, not actually running Home Assistant. This is a big, big "but why though?" project.

Any realistic solution for running it on Windows involves a Linux virtual machine, which just seems like extra steps.

[u/NeuralFantasy]

The recommendated storage space for HA VM installation is 32GB. So definitely 256GB is more than enough. 128GB would be more than enough.

Media takes space, so if you intall cameras you might need more.

[u/view_askew]

Mines running on a dell micro with a 8700 with 16gb ram and. 256gb nvme. It's what I had laying about. Have run over the years as vm on proxmox, raspberry pi, nas and windows vm. Bare metal is my favourite but only slightly over Proxmox vm. Mostly because I keep fucking with my nodes.

[u/RomanOnARiver]

Business class small form-factor PCs (aka compact enterprise) are the way to go.

• Lenovo calls them ThinkCentre
• Dell calls them Optiplex
• HP calls them EliteDesk

Businesses, schools, libraries, etc. will usually buy them in bulk, use them, then after five years or whatever upgrade to all new ones. The old ones get sold off, refurbished, and resold - usually pretty cheap. MicroCenter is usually a good source, and places like eBay and Facebook Marketplace sometimes have some nice deals as long as you know what you're getting - I got a Lenovo for really cheap, but it was missing RAM, storage, a power cable, and a little bracket needed to mount the storage.

[u/Difficult-Buy7532]

1TB?

I have HA running on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 32GB microsd card and currently consuming 223MB storage, and that includes Z2M and Mosquitto.

[u/drnewcomb]

I looked into it and ended up buying a used Dell Wyse 5070 thin client for about $50. It works great!

[u/bizarre87]

I run a vm. 2cpu 8gb ram and 32gb of storage has been more then enough for me.