In our hobbies, there are many rabbit holes we enjoy exploring. Last year, I decided to try out Home Assistant, an open-source home automation solution. To host the application, I set up a Protectli Vault FW4B, which has a 4-port ethernet build centered around an Intel processor (64-bit @ 1.6 GHz). This fan-less NUC was designed for running firewall applications, and since I just wanted to experiment, it seemed like a good low-power system for running Home Assistant in a virtual machine (VM) without needing to reinstall the Windows operating system that was initially on it.
While that might sound like an odd choice, the outcome would have been similar if I had opted for Linux. However, I ended up going down the rabbit hole and started using Home Assistant more and more until the 128GB of storage on the FW4B was filled up. It was clear that it was time to upgrade.
I felt it was the right moment to consider some changes. First, I noticed that the FW4B was fairly slow at running this resource-intensive software stack (OS + VMM + HA), and I thought about moving Home Assistant to a machine with a more powerful CPU. Another option I considered was to abandon the VM and install the Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS) directly on the FW4B. However, I anticipated that migrating my existing Home Assistant instance would be more complicated than simply exporting and importing the VM on a new system, and I feared I would encounter the same limitations in the future on the FW4B.
Ultimately, I decided to migrate Home Assistant to an i7-based NUC that I had dedicated to managing my IoT network. This change worked flawlessly, and the performance boost made using Home Assistant significantly more convenient—no more endless waiting periods! 😊 At the same time, I also upgraded to a 1TB mSATA SSD to replace the original 128GB drive. It’s worth mentioning that the FW4B has only one mSATA slot.
I still appreciate the FW4B; it has become my IoT management NUC. Ultimately, I upgraded to a better system on the same day, successfully migrated my Home Assistant instance, and significantly improved performance. This entire experience reinforced my belief that we should always aim for greater capacity and performance whenever possible, as we will inevitably need it. At least, that has been my experience.
