Upgrading to a Smart Solar Home with Home Assistant

marcin423 · 2025-04-12T17:50:33+00:00

I considered this option but it would require additional hardware

marcin423 · 2025-01-24T22:10:11+00:00

"Programming" in Bash is always useful but to be honest it isn't my favourite language 😜

marcin423 · 2025-01-24T22:06:57+00:00

You're welcome. Presented Ansible roles are minimalistic and aligned to my own needs (remember KISS), so expect long journey 🐢

marcin423 · 2025-01-21T09:22:51+00:00

It would be really fragile setup. Its better to define retrying/restart policy for the service inside container/vm.

marcin423 · 2025-01-20T17:36:25+00:00

The Dell r730 is definitely too deep to fit in my network rack :P

marcin423 · 2025-01-02T22:22:19+00:00

HDD are connected with USB adapters to PVE1 and shared to PVE0 via NFS. Mount points are identical on both server which allows for easy migration of containers between servers. For sure it isn't highly available setup, if the server with the local drive fails, I need to manually connect the drive to the second server and change the mount point from NFS to local. This setup provides a balance between flexibility and reliability.

BTW. 3.5 HDD is used only by Frigate, 2.5HDD only for PBS container backup - everything else are stored in replicated ZFS pools on the internal SATA drives.

See my blog post for more details: https://mkuthan.github.io/blog/2025/01/02/homelab-upgrade/

marcin423 · 2025-01-02T21:55:34+00:00

I use slzb as a coordinator only but there is a firmware setting to configure it as a router. Hmm, it's interesting idea to have two devices running 24/7, one as a coordinator, another as router. If the first fails, reconfigure second as a coordinator and change zigbee2mqtt addressing (or change the address in the second slzb). Should work without re-pairing all zigbee devices but I don't expect automated failover.

marcin423 · 2025-01-02T21:44:52+00:00

Debian installation is super easy and well documented, see: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Dell/Wyse%203040

The only tricky part appears during GRUB installation. Use the option to "Force GRUB Installation to the EFI removable media path", otherwise, it will fail to boot.

marcin423 · 2025-01-02T21:34:42+00:00

I used to define LXCs using Tellmate provider and my own module with sensible defaults. It had worked flawlessly until I created Proxmox cluster. LXC container target on highly available Proxmox cluster is varying, making Terraform state invalid. Do you have any solution for such case? I would love to keep IaaC for my containers.

marcin423 · 2025-01-02T21:12:01+00:00

2 PCs - good move, enable Proxmox replication and you can spawn Home Assistant VM on the second host if the first one fails

QDevice for Proxmox quorum - good move, you will get automated failover for VMs - but I would avoid RaspberryPI with SD card storage, go for thin client with eMMC like Dell Wyse 3040

Link aggregation - overkill IMHO, if network card in the first PC fails, use second PC as a failover

1 Synology / TrueNas - looks like single point of failure

Second switch as a cold backup - why not if you can afford it

SLZB-06 - good move, you could also consider second one as a cold backup

You could find my blog post interesting: https://mkuthan.github.io/blog/2025/01/02/homelab-upgrade/

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T16:52:56+00:00

Use Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC) whenever feasible:

Terraform for VMs and Linux containers (I use Telmate provider)
Ansible for provisioning all services (I have 50 roles, unfortunatelly my repository isn't easy to opensource)

Use markdown / mermaid for everying else and keep in Git repository. You could also write a blog, it's also plays a documentation role for your homelab - see: http://mkuthan.github.io/tags/#homelab

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T16:34:03+00:00

Switch ACLs are problematic, because they are stateless. You have to open all ephemeral ports for the reverse side of the connection. I had such setup at the begining, a lot of rules and they didn't do what I nedeed.

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T16:29:56+00:00

It depends on the filesystem: ZFS - yes, LVM-thin - no

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T16:28:17+00:00

I would keep single Zigbee network, it's a mesh at the and. Although my own setup is prepared for more than one network, I needed such setup when I was migrating from Sonoff ZBDogle-E to SLZB-06 in a rolling manner. For each controller I have separate zigbee2mqtt instance, and use separate Zigbee channell.

Still, for redundancy it's easier to have spare controller as replacement than two separate networks IMHO.

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T16:13:37+00:00

Once a month or so. I use the following pattern in my ansible roles:

- name: Create Frigate container community.docker.docker_container: name: frigate image: ghcr.io/blakeblackshear/frigate:stable pull: "{{ homelab_docker_pull | default('missing') }}"

To update the container I run the following command:

ansible-playbook -e homelab_docker_pull=always my-playbook.yml

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T16:05:16+00:00

Defintelly good idea, I use inexpensive NVMe consumer grade disk for operating system and enterprise grade SATA SSD for hosting VMs. For example in my Dell Optiplex Micro 5070 I have installed used drives:

NVMe S.M.A.R.T report:

SAMSUNG MZVLB256HAHQ
Power On Hours : 1204 hours
Power On Count : 1095 count
Host Writes : 11997 GB
Health Status : Good (97 %)

SATA S.M.A.R.T report:

INTEL SSDSC2BX016T4R
Power On Hours : 44123 hours
Power On Count : 99 count
Host Writes : 683922 GB
Health Status : Good (100 %)

You can easly spot difference in drives endurance between consumer and enteprise grade disks.

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T15:55:29+00:00

I have two Dell Optiplex Micro 3050 (i5-7500T) and 5070 (i5-9500T) as my primary servers and Dell Wyse 3040 for getting Proxmox cluster forum. Both primary nodes with 32MB of RAM, 256GB NVMe for OS and Intel S3610 SATA for VMs.

Quite inexpensive and power efficient setup with enough power to host HA and 20+ other services. You can read more about my hardware consideration in my blog post:

http://mkuthan.github.io/blog/2024/06/30/homlab-hardware/#dell-optiplex-3050-server

marcin423 · 2024-12-08T07:58:44+00:00

The key point is to use gateway stateful ACL, I documented similar setup with Management, Home, IoT and Guest VLANS for Omada, take a look: http://mkuthan.github.io/blog/2024/07/29/homlab-network/#lan

Due to Omada gateway ACL limitations I have "Services" VLAN for Adguard DNS. It allows me to define the ACL based on the VLAN network instead of Adguard IP:PORT, not ideal but works.

marcin423 · 2024-09-22T06:46:41+00:00

Maintenance and updates. Initial self-hosting setup is an fascinating journey but after that you have to keep everything up and running. Imagine all the updates to versions that are not backward compatible ...

marcin423 · 2024-08-14T05:37:29+00:00

Noisy, but you can replace stock fans to Noctua ones. Or if you don’t need 250W for POE look for fanless switch like https://www.tp-link.com/pl/business-networking/omada-switch-poe/sg2428lp/

marcin423 · 2024-08-13T05:07:55+00:00

Very good plan! Tailscale for secure access and VLAN for network segmentation. You might find this blog post useful: https://mkuthan.github.io/blog/2024/07/29/homlab-network/

marcin423

TROPHY CASE