home-assistant

Proxmox | Home Assistant OS

Installing Home Assistant OS on Proxmox VE 7.2-3 as a Virtual Machine, using the QCOW2 image file and migrating my existing setup.

Jukka

May 25, 2022 • 6 min read

Installing Home Assistant OS on Proxmox VE 7.2-3 as a Virtual Machine and migrating my previous installation from VMware ESXi.

Create a VM in Proxmox

Click create VM

General

Setting the VM ID (150)
Set the name (HomeAssistantOS)
Check start at boot

VM ID is needed later when the image disk is imported and attached to the VM

OS

System

Disks

setting the disk size to 64GB

CPU

Add the number of CPU cores that you need (I had 6 in ESXi)

Memory

Network

Using my default Linux Bridge

Confirm

Uncheck Start after created (Do not start the VM), Click Finish. The disk image needs to be added before the VM is started.

Detach Hard Disk

The current Hard Disk is not needed, we will import the Home Assistant OS image into the disk.

Select the Hard Disk and click Detach.

Remove Unused Disk 0

Remove the Unused Disk 0, it will get recreated, but just make sure it's "zeroed". I will later attach the imported disk image to it.

Remove CD/DVD Drive

Select the CD/DVD Drive and click remove, it is not needed.

Download the latest KVM/Proxmox image

From the pages below check the location (link) of the latest KVM/Proxmox image Releases · home-assistant/operating-system (github.com) file (haos_ova-8.1.qcow2.xz)

# at the time of writing the latest qcow2 image

https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/8.1/haos_ova-8.1.qcow2.xz

Download the image file into Proxmox

Select the Proxmox Node where you created the VM (150) and open the Shell.

In the Shell run

# this will download the latest image file into the Proxmox installation disk

wget https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/8.1/haos_ova-8.1.qcow2.xz

Once the download is finished run, install xz-utils to unpack the xz file and run the unpack command.

# install xz-utils

apt install xz-utils

# uncompress the xz file
unxz haos_ova-8.1.qcow2.xz

Import the disk

Import the disk into my VM (150) and place it in my Raid 10 SSD storage.

# qm importdisk "VM-ID" "haos-image-name.qcow2" "storage-pool-name"

qm importdisk 150 haos_ova-8.1.qcow2 ssd10

# 150 is the VM ID of my HomeAssistantOS
# ssd10 is my four ssd drive raid10 storage for VMs

you can now clean-up/remove the qcow2 file from the Proxmox local storage

# delete the image file

rm haos_ova-8.1.qcow2

Edit the VM

Attach the disk

Attach the disk to the VM (150), by highlighting the Unused Disk 0, clicking Edit

Check that the disk image matches the VM ID, which I imported earlier.

Change Boot Order

Make sure that the VM boots from the disk image, by changing the boot order.

Enable and drag the SCSI disk on top, and disable all other boot devices.

Start the VM

Now the VM is ready for the first boot.

Open the Home Assistant in Browser, and start your journey.

Migrate existing Home Assistant installation

I have my existing installation in ESXi as a VM. I'll just log in to my existing Home Assistant and go into backups and create a new full backup. My Full Backup is close to 1.4GB, so it took a while to complete.

Backup current Home Assistant instance

I have a SMB share on my HA backups, if you don't, you can download the backup

Restore the backup on the new installation

Next, open the new installation, and click the link "Alternatively you can restore from a previous backup". I select the backup file from my share

.. and let it upload.

Make sure it's Full backup and then click Restore.

You may need to refresh the browser, then login to see if everything is in place.

What is still left to do is move the physical devices, and pass them through in Proxmox. Finally, release the IP address from the previous install and bind it to the new installation.

Moving the Conbee II USB stick

Conbee II should be attached to a USB 2.0 socket, but according to the motherboard manual, I don't have any.

Passing the USB stick through in Proxmox Hardware settings

Restarting Home Assistant, and login

Start deCONZ addon, and check Start on boot

Waiting about a minute for the devices to reconnect .. and looks like the lights and sensors are starting to report again.

Changing the IP address

I want to keep the original IP address as I have some stuff (automation, links, etc) tied to that.

From my Unifi Network settings, I selected the old Home Assistant installation and changed the fixed IP address to something unused, and apply it.

Then the same way assigning the old IP to the new installation and rebooting the new installation.

That's it .. everything seems to be working! If there still are some problems, I am sure I am going to hear about them, once the rest of the family is back at home.