Second Home Assistant Instance

Expanding in the realm of smart home automation, I recently subscribed to Nabu Casa's Home Assistant Cloud—a decision driven by my desire to support the development team and simplify the management of the Home Assistant instance at my parent's home. The promises of seamless remote access without router/domain configurations proved true, bringing convenience to a new level.

While the subscription streamlined the connection process and allowed me to link my parent's Amazon Echos effortlessly, I encountered a significant hurdle when attempting to integrate a 5TB external hard drive into the system. My initial plan was to use the external HDD as the boot device, but an incompatible USB adapter thwarted that effort. Undeterred, I repurposed the drive as a data disk, only to face issues with the filesystem after heavy disk writes within a week.

Caught amidst holiday chaos, I lacked the time to order the appropriate hardware for a more sustainable solution. In a pinch, I turned to the third-party SambaNAS addon, which enabled me to mount the disk and create a Samba share of its filesystem. This workaround seemed promising, allowing Home Assistant to connect to the external drive using the Samba protocol and providing access to its contents. However, a new challenge emerged as the Samba connection failed every few hours, requiring manual re-initialization.

Despite these setbacks, my ultimate goal remains unchanged: to mirror media in a second Plex server running as an addon and establish a Nextcloud instance for offsite backup of personal files. The prospect of running critical services and data backups on a low-power Raspberry Pi holds great appeal, anticipating the day when proper hardware configuration replaces the current makeshift setup.

In navigating the complexities of smart home integration, this journey has become a testament to the evolving nature of technology. Despite the challenges, the allure of a seamlessly connected and automated home, backed by robust backup solutions, keeps the momentum alive, promising a future where smart homes truly live up to their potential.