Move Home Assistant to Proxmox: A complete step-by-step guide

This step-by-step guide will show how to install Proxmox and move your current Home Assistant instance in less than an hour and with less than five minutes of downtime for Home Assistant. And you might be surprised by how easy the process is and also to learn that you don't need expensive, high-end hardware to improve the performance and reliability of Home Assistant. There are many ways to do this, but the method I show is meant to be easy to follow and to minimize both risk and downtime. Note that this is not intended to be a full Proxmox tutorial, but will include what you need to know to create a VM and move Home Assistant, along with information on creating backups and snapshots of your new VM.

Chapter Links:
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00:00 Intro and background
01:28 Why run Home Assistant on Proxmox
02:38 Minimum and recommended hardware
06:40 Downloading Proxmox and preparing installation media
07:46 Checking system BIOS and Settings
08:35 Optionally setting fixed IP before installtion
09:17 Installing Proxmox on target machine
13:52 Accessing Proxmox and signing in for the first time
15:20 Updating Proxmox and changing repositories
18:50 IP address considerations and options
19:49 Installing Home Assistant in a new VM
23:09 Starting the VM and checking Home Assistant
24:02 Restoring Home Assistant from backups
25:42 Cutting over from old system to new Proxmox system
28:25 Reviewing new system
29:16 Mapping a NAS and creating VM backups
33:50 Creating and using snapshots
34:55 Repurposing the original version hardware
35:52 Summary and future plans

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This is the mini-PC that I used in this video (but lower powered versions can also do the job):

(The above are Amazon affiliate links. While it will not impact your pricing, as an affiliate this channel may earn a small commision if you make a purchase.)

Other Links mentioned:
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#homeassistant #proxmox #virtualmachine

[Ariana-sbix]

This tutorial was just what I needed. Proxmox is so intimidating, but this made it easy. Thank you for such great detail!!

[MonoxideC]

This was such an amazing help! Huge thanks!

[richmaliz]

This was a great tutorial! Got my Home Assistant up and running on proxmox in less that an hour. Keep up the great content.

[bobdurk]

Definately a great tutorial; I think I will need to watch it through again a few times before I attempt it.

[kloakovalimonada]

You're a great instructor. The little hints and tips ("...that means you have two instances of HA running but as they have different IPs, it's fine") are very valuable and almost always omitted in guides. Clarity is #1 important and your video is super clear.

[andymok]

Good info. I started with HA on a pi, with slow reboots and damaged SD cards. Then ran HA on Proxmox for several years. Now have it on HA blue hardware. Reason, it was a pain having the down time during the reboots when Proxmox has certain update. I have all the add-ons running in LXC on a small system running Proxmox and is working out great. It was easy to transfer HA from my first Proxmox machine to a new Proxmox with more resources. Just create a new backup of the VM and then restore it to the new machine. Having node-red, mqtt up while HA is rebooting is also nice.

[apreotea]

Thanks for this video, helped me migrate from RPi to a nice little compact i5 box with minimum of headaches. Cheers!

[angusmccloud]

had been putting off this job for so long, followed your vid and it couldn't have been easier. thank you so much. now to get frigate going!

[troyd-motorsport]

Great video! Very detailed and easy to follow for a noobie at proxmox. Thanks!

[ssoat]

Brilliant tutorial for moving old HAS from raspberry pi to new proxmox VM. The tip to clone the mac address from the original instance was an absolute timesaver.

[JMX]

This is great - thanks for posting - will be doing it when my Nuc arrives - appreciate the written version too (sometimes easier to follow)

[ElishaiPoran]

Well done for creating the video on a very important and useful topic without a doubt!

Thank you very much and I subscribed to your channel for fun!

[ajueket]

Thank you for this. It was super helpful!!!

[SavagrH]

I just migrated from an Unraid VM and this video was very helpful. I tried migrating a while ago and had issues with the MQTT broker. Using the same IP address as the old installation and copying the MAC address from my Unraid VM made the transition seamless. Thanks!

[trashpse]

Nice work, thanks! Could you also give me a hint on you dashboard? Whicht ha-bib did you use to build this clear structure with this nice cards, and temperature graphs?

[shb]

Thank you - this worked for migrating my HAOS 12.4 on an older Dell Wyse PC to my newer PC running Proxmox 8. The only extra thing I had to do, to get my Sonoff Zigbee dongle to work was allow the VM to see the USB port.

[Nickolas]

Hello, my nuc will be shipped tomorrow and is going to replace my rpi3 so your guide is just perfect to me, way easy to understand many thanks for this ! Fingers crossed for tomorrow's installation but with your video I'm really confident to succeed in doing this. Again Merci beaucoup !!!

[DaveA-sbue]

Another great video and tutorial. Followed this step by step and I am now running my HA on proxmox. Great suggestions you just don't see in other videos. The part about copying the Mac address was such a great idea and worked perfectly. Thanks!

[rodneysmith]

Great video, and timely in my particular case! Thank you for everything, all your beneficial and informative videos, and the personalized help you have offered in the past, you have opened a whole new hobby for me with Home Assistant. I am anxious to see where you go next...

[echodun]

Moved from Win 11 VM/VirtualBox to Proxmox by following this video and I was up and running in less than an hour. BalenaEtcher killed my USB card until I got it back running and tteckster's page looks a little different now, but I figured it out. Also, ran the backup using the method here to my Windows 11 server computer that HA was originally installed. In the last steps (after copying the MAC address and putting my old HA offline), I inserted the Sonoff USB into the NUC (GMKtec G3) and it did require a reboot of the new Proxmox HA install, but worked after that.