I did the migration today during my lunch. It’s true, it was practically seamless and everything is now back to how it was (or better!). The only things that weren’t 100% automagic were containers I was running on the same machine: an MQTT server and Homebridge for some devices that were previously pulled in via HomeKit.
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@span cassidy Put Proxmox on the NUC and run both in LXCs. Then look at some of the other stuff available and have fun!
@span cassidy from what I’ve heard, plex runs well on the synology systems and I believe is officially supported on their systems. And I have always had a better experience with HA running HAOS than in a docker container.
I don’t know for sure but it would make sense that plex might have better performance with physical access to the drives that hold the media as well.
@span cassidy could you run Proxmox on the NUC? You can copy the whole current system into a VM to spin up and then you can run another VM for HASSOS. You'd probably be able to run everything with the current resources but running add ons in HASSOS will require more RAM eventually.
The migration is not too complex but it will require some work but the upside is you'd keep your existing Plex install as is and then get the benefit of a Home Assistant VM install
@span cassidy i would try to run Proxmox VE on the NUC and run HAOS in a virtual machine. Updating PVE (debian) is as easy as updating Ubuntu server. You can do backups and snapshots to reverse changes on the vms easily. you will always have console access to the vms itself so no need for ssh eg.
@span cassidy
My personal stuff is running on Incus. Ported the haos image to work with incus, and all of the jellyfin/mediaserver + immich container setup to the incus OCI setup.
Works quite well, and mostly been hands off so far.
My personal stuff is running on Incus. Ported the haos image to work with incus, and all of the jellyfin/mediaserver + immich container setup to the incus OCI setup.
Works quite well, and mostly been hands off so far.
@span cassidy
Maybe I misread this, but Plex runs fine as app on Synology NAS. It depends a bit on the NAS if you require transcoding. Synology is prone to use outdated hardware, even in the newest generations.
@span DonTheMaster yeah transcoding is the main worry I have with running it directly on the NAS. I see there is a Home Assistant add-on for Plex, so I wonder if I should run it directly on the rebuilt Home Assistant NUC that way, just using the NAS as storage. 🤔
@span cassidy I have not checked, but is the HA plug in not for accessing a remote server?
@span DonTheMaster there is an “integration” which enables integration with a remote server, but there is also an “add-on” which lets you run the service itself on the same machine.
@span cassidy Ah, cool, wasn't aware.
Did you check if HA OS supports the Hardware, especially the graphic card for transcoding. Or, the CPU if 8t can do x264/h265 transcoding
Hope you document this journey. I’m hoping to build my own system in a similar vein soon. (Once my networking closet setup is finished.)
@span cassidy If you're up for yet another piece of hardware, I've also had a great experience with my Home Assistant Green so far. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.
@span zak if I was starting completely over/didn't already have hardware, I would probably go that route! But I have a perfectly good NUC and Zigbee radio already, so I think I might basically convert that machine completely to a Home Assistant box.
@span cassidy Aha, yep that makes sense.
Note: I am not (and do not want to be!) a sysadmin. I’ve been running the same Ubuntu server install for something like five years, upgraded several times. Plex is currently installed as a Snap, which had been working fine for years until it recently filled the OS disk with thumbnails. Home Assistant is running on the same install via Docker, which I manually update every month or so when there are new releases. More than anything, I would like it all to be as hands-off as possible.
@span cassidy If you want the ultimate hands-off experience just run everything on Home Assistant OS, including your Plex server. It will even handle automated updates and regular backups for you.
I’m also currently exposing this server to the Internet so I can access it remotely (and I’d previously thought about hosting my website from it), but I pay for Home Assistant Cloud through Nabu Casa and am happy to use tailscale for anything else.
I’m also currently running Homebridge (I think as a package from their PPA?), which I think I can replace with my Starling Home Hub and/or use as an add-on with HA OS.
I think that’s “all” the machine is doing these days…
Update: files have been copied. The NAS has been reset. Plex has been installed directly on the NAS and is now doing all of its media analysis and database building. I probably could have figured out how to directly migrate my existing Plex install, but starting fresh is kinda nice.
The next (and more painful) step will be to reset the NUC and set up Home Assistant OS. Maybe during the day when nobody else is home is a good time to do that? 🤔
Does anyone in my circles have experience migrating a Home Assistant install*? I have backups and nothing is mission critical if I had to redo it, but it would be annoying to have to set things like automations and dashboards back up. But those *should* be safe with my multiple backups in different locations…
I'm just wondering what I should look out for. I'm nervous lol
*I’m specifically going from a container on Ubuntu to Home Assistant OS on the same hardware, with MQTT
I did the migration today during my lunch. It’s true, it was practically seamless and everything is now back to how it was (or better!). The only things that weren’t 100% automagic were containers I was running on the same machine: an MQTT server and Homebridge for some devices that were previously pulled in via HomeKit.
For MQTT, I installed the add-on and then was prompted to reauth which worked perfectly. So no issues there.
For Homebridge, I actually replaced it with a Starling Home Hub I’ve had for a while. I was using it for Nest devices; it supports local video streams and more entities like the Nest Protect motion sensors, and exposes that all over HomeKit. Since they added broad Google Home to HomeKit bridging, I can just use the couple of other couple of devices via it as well.
@cassidy I moved my HA instance from a VM on my Synology to an LXC on Proxmox. Just installed the HA, restored the backup and I was good.
@span cassidy I migrated from an SD card to an SSD on the same Raspberry Pi. Backup from the SD card, restore to the SSD, everything just worked. (Astonishingly! - I'm in the business and have some concept of how hard that sort of thing is to get right.)
@span cassidy I have migrated twice now and it went flawlessly both times. The only thing that required tweaking were HW specific like device paths and storage paths. Note that I run on HAOS. If you are using one of the other installation configurations, it will probably be more complicated.
@span cassidy I do, but it's probably not helpful. When I had to do it due to a hardware failure, it was super easy. I moved over to a new Pi 5, and after I wrote the image to the card it was stupid easy. Paraphrasing, it asked if it was a new install or if I should restore a backup. I said restore, and everything just stood back up like it was never gone. I didn't have any gotcha moments or anything.
@span mike that's what I've heard, so I'm optimistic! My only hesitation is that I have quite a few HACS repos and then I am currently running Homebridge and MQTT outside of Home Assistant on the same hardware. I think I just need to back any configs from that stuff up in case I can't get it to come back the same way when switching to HA OS.
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@span cassidy New install from a fresh backup works like a charm!
@span cassidy if you are restoring an encrypted backup make sure you have the key ready, you can find it in the HA ui under backups
@span cassidy I'm using Cloudflare for that myself for things like https://honeycutt.family and https://ahoneybun.net
@span cassidy alright so I have HAOS on an Intel NUC and the rest of the services like Jellyfin and such on another system which is running NixOS. I'm not looking forward to moving data once my two 1TB drives are filled (setup in a RAID1).
As for HAOS I have enjoyed using HACS since all of them support HAOS best.
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