As I've begun to use Home Assistant more and more, I realized that my setup had become quite limited in scalability. I ran it alongside my other containers on my TrueNAS home server, and it got the job done for basic automation. However, a number of problems made me realize that it wasn't sustainable in the long term, prompting me to set up the Ayaneo AM01 as a Proxmox host, where I then migrated Home Assistant and my other home-related services to. With how it turned out, I couldn't be happier.
There are a few reasons why I did it, though. Some are with a focus on a long-term goal, while others gave me more immediate benefits. So far, all of the benefits have played out exactly as I hoped. Home Assistant OS is great, I can use add-ons, and my Zigbee connections are significantly improved thanks to the fact that I have more options for where I can place this machine, thanks to its size.
A separate Proxmox host is more stable in my case
Plus, Home Assistant OS is simply better
While this is definitely user-dependent, the Proxmox host that I've migrated to is infinitely more stable than my TrueNAS setup. That's absolutely not a knock on TrueNAS either; it was entirely of my own doing that TrueNAS was "unstable" for Home Assistant. I do a lot of experimentation on my NAS, playing with new configurations and settings that sometimes entirely crash the server. When that happened, that also meant Home Assistant went down too, which was incredibly annoying. Not only did it mean my home automation broke, but applications such as AccuWeather with limited API usage would sometimes run out of free requests before the day was over, as Home Assistant will query those APIs on boot to refresh the data.
While my TrueNAS system is still a hub of experimentation, my Proxmox host largely sits untouched. It has a few LXCs for Frigate, Zigbee2MQTT, and Mosquitto, and that's really it. I can deploy some additional services if I want to, but to be honest, I don't really. Anything new that I configure and play with goes on my TrueNAS system, meaning that my Home Assistant machine is always online and accessible, without any risk of my tinkering knocking the entire system offline.
With that, though, comes another major benefit: Home Assistant OS. Home Assistant OS is a Linux-based operating system that runs Home Assistant Supervisor in a container, with the Docker container engine controlling Home Assistant Core. Supervisor also controls add-ons, which are Docker containers installed alongside Home Assistant, but managed from within Home Assistant. It's the recommended way to run it, as it manages everything for you without any need to go tinkering with containers and other configuration files. Even for someone who is proficient in Linux and Docker, it just makes things easier.
On top of that, the add-on repository has a few benefits, even if all of the add-ons can be installed separately. It can give you new ideas for things to try out that you wouldn't have come across otherwise, and they can also be added to the sidebar in your Home Assistant, so that they can be natively accessed. Music Assistant has been one of the best add-ons that I discovered thanks to Home Assistant OS, and even as I write this, I'm listening to music being played through Music Assistant on my Huawei Sound speaker over DLNA. It's simply phenomenal, and because it all works natively within Home Assistant, management is made simpler.
As an aside, I find that sometimes, tech communities can feel a sense of ire directed at those looking for the "easy way out," so to speak, which I have seen negative attention of a similar variety directed at Home Assistant OS users. Criticisms like "you can just install add-ons as external containers instead" are quite common, but sometimes, the most efficient way to approach something is also the easiest way to approach it, and that's what Home Assistant OS offers. It's a streamlined approach to adding additional functionality to an already incredible piece of software, and ensures that it all just works. There's no shame in recognizing the ease and simplicity of one approach, but likewise, I respect those who opt to go for the "do everything manually" approach, as you can learn a lot and, in the long run, have even more control. Both are valid, and it's all a matter of personal preference.
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A long-term goal to decrease my power usage
This mini PC uses way less power
Energy can be expensive, and the other reason I opted to migrate to Home Assistant OS on a Proxmox machine relates to power usage. My home server can be quite expensive to run, with the cost working out to be approximately €5 a week. It's not a lot, but it adds up, even if roughly €20 every month is still cheaper than a lot of subscription services that it can actually replace. However, it'd be nice to reduce that bill further, which leads me into my long-term plan that this enables me to enact.
The hardware on my TrueNAS machine supports Wake-on-LAN, something that previously wasn't useful. I didn't want to just turn off Home Assistant overnight, especially when a few of my automations relate to nighttime and when I first wake up in the morning. However, with the migration of my essential home services to their own dedicated host, I can keep my home server offline at night, with an automation to wake it up in the morning. I've already got Wake-on-LAN working, so I just need to migrate a few more essential services over (namely my Nginx Proxy Manager), and I can then automate the turning off and on of my server when I need it, rather than having it running all of the time.
As well, because I found conflicting information on this, here's what worked for me to get Wake-on-LAN working on TrueNAS. I first found my Ethernet adapter with "sudo ifconfig" in the TrueNAS shell (sudo, because ifconfig is only in /sbin), and in my case, it was eno1. From there, I added "ethtool -s eno1 wol g" to my post-init scripts in the TrueNAS UI, running 20 seconds after boot. This enables Wake-on-LAN, so that when my server shuts down, I can send a magic packet to bring it back up again later.
It's a super small thing, but one that benefits me and my usage. Every person's home lab is different, and what works for me may not work for you. However, migrating services to their own Proxmox host, namely Home Assistant, has its perks, especially when on a server that consumes a lot of power ordinarily. For context, the Ayaneo AM01 consumes anywhere from 6W to 12W most of the time, whereas my home server is more in the range of 60W to 80W. Plus, it's obviously a lot noisier in my living room, too.
If you like to experiment on your main machine with Home Assistant, or you just want an easier system to deploy Home Assistant and test new add-ons, Home Assistant OS is the way to go. While I'm using Proxmox, you can deploy it on bare metal too, and even on an SBC if yours is beefy enough. Give it a try, it might just simplify things for you!