subtle locust
I am contemplating upgrading my HA box from my ODROID N2+ to a Beelink Mini PC (https://amzn.to/4it1DT9) --- my question is, what do i lose doing that, and what to I gain by upgrading my hardware? Is it worth the upgrade if i am running cameras and stuff all on HA too?
vast wraith
Hi @subtle locust,
Well for one that eMMC has a limited lifetime if you are using that for your OS. Also more CPU and a real GPU would do wonders for those cameras. After 8gb of memory a lot of that is not needed, but if you have enough CI's, Add-Ons, and Cameras it might.
subtle locust
The eMMC on the ODROID?
I mean currently i have nearly zero issues with it. But i can see it starting to push limits as I have started to add stuff like Scrypted and cameras to it monitoring the hardware
vast wraith
It's a wear item, unlike regular memory, there is a limited number of writes available and the Database on HA tends to premature wear on that. At the 3-4 year mark we are seeing people on here saying they are at nearlt 0 life left in some reports.
subtle locust
oh dang
It's been MUCH more stable than my microSD card on my original RPI
i am going on about 2 years now with it. 🤔 now you are really making me think about that purchase more
vast wraith
That is 100% true, they can wear out in weeks if you get a cheap one. It is a lot longer than that, but it has a limiten life.
In most applications it never bothers anyone, but some of the HA databases have been hard on them (for some people)
subtle locust
Yeah alright.
I have a beefy desktop i run my homelab on, which i can run HA in a docker container on it, but i like the convenience of HA OS with the add on store
vast wraith
NVME's and SSD's also will wear out, but generally there is so much spare space there it never bothers anyone.
subtle locust
Yeah i haven't actually ever had an M.2 or a SSD die on me in like 10 years
:: just knocked on wood ::
vast wraith
They move the writes around to wear evenly on the whole thing, and then it takes forever to be noticed, but the emmc is smaller and a larger percentage used with 'static'-ish stuff.
subtle locust
i see. gotcha. I used to be a hardware guy but moved into software engineering 12 or so years ago so I don't know anything about the new PC stuff outside of my gaming setup. So you are educating me a little here
vast wraith
You can run HAOS in a VM and stillhave addons and supervisor. I like bare metal so I would do the beelink, but there are advantages as well with the VM. You can snapshot the whole thing very quickly and restore it that fast as well outside of HA.
vast wraith
The virtual connections thru the VM barrier tend to freak me out, I don't trust them, but hey, they seem to mostly work.
subtle locust
i do like having bare metal hardware for HA though so i can run it independently of my other stuff
vast wraith
ditto
subtle locust
So would that box i posted in my original thread comment be a good one to start with? Is there a better brand? Just running HAOS so not wanting to go super beefy
vast wraith
Yup it's the one most recommended lately.
vast wraith
I have 1 VM running my DEV stuff. It's on an old PC with no UEFI bios, so I didn't have a choice. (Ran out of junk new enough to have UEFI.)
subtle locust
😄
I feel that. My desktop is my old gaming rig that is waaay too powerful to be doing anything else but gaming but it's running my media server
I have like 18 docker containers running
vast wraith
Hey, perfect candidate to load Ollama and do some fun AI stuff then.
subtle locust
Yeah it's got 2 SLI GTX 1080 TIs in it. They can't handle AI. I have tried. 😄
vast wraith
My laptop I bought has a 4060 nvidia in it and I don't game, just wanted the CPU for video editing. Now I added the Ollama stuff on it and HA can ask it to be a smart-ass and keep the TTS stuff in the house interesting.