Bottom line, if you have problems in getting your SSD to work there are a few users who do not want to support you. The rest certainly tries to help you.
For openhab related questions the fact that you run your OS on an SSD does not matter (in the same way as if you run openhab on a Windows PC from an SSD).
How would you flash the SSD on a pc? I dont think i have a (spare) NVMe slot…
Just buy a SSD M.2 NVMe Enclosure USB 3.1 to PCI-e. It costs about 5-20€
My take on it is that you should have a hardware backup as well as software backups. So I own two odroid n2+ as two full sets of hardware. This way if I have stability issues I can swap out power supplies and each piece of hardware to rule out the hardware as the cause. Having a second one means you can test releases before moving your main openhab to the release you have tested. Since openhab has been very good in this area I have stopped doing this and the spare just sits around or gets used for other testing.
Choose if you want to use containers or hardware. Work out what level you are and if you do not want to learn Linux, then stick with openhabian and what they recommend.
You can also install armbian and have their installer get openhab running very easily, so this opens up more Arm boards. Just do not trust any claims openhabian works for other boards, if you go out on your own then you need to do your own support and asking here or using google will get you by just fine.
Some people like to use containers, and then it makes sense to get a server that costs more to run as you can then use it to run multiple projects in containers all sharing the one server. This is worth considering as many new projects are coming out that offer a docker image as a quick way to get the project running.
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+1 LOVE THIS idea!
I have a cold spare 24-port layer 3 network switch/ router for this reason.
Unfortunately it is too expensive for me to have a second server ($4k-6k) that’s just going to be sitting around unused (powered off even) as a spare, getting obsolete meanwhile.
My solution for that is to buy a preemptive replacement upgrade every 3 years or so before anything happens, and use redundant parts like dual PSU, spare HDDs, multiple backup copies of data etc.
So that’s one benefit of using a cheaper SBC like a pi. Having two copies of the hardware isn’t too expensive.
I view my RPi3 (which serves as my print server) as my hardware backup for openHAB. If the RPi4 died, I’d just have to take the SD card out and put it into my RPi3 to be back up and running in a few minutes.
I had just assumed I’ll do the same thing with an RPi5 in the future, but it occurs to me that an m.2 SSD can’t be moved to the older RPi4.
This is really it. I’ve learned just enough to get by in Linux, but it’s not really where I want to focus my time and energy. So, I’m better off sticking with openHABian on an SD card. I might feel differently if I had experienced a lot of SD failures in the past.
My 2cents:
- For everyone, who knows hardware and OS in deep: use whatever you want, you’ll get it sorted anyways.
- For those, who don’t know hardware and OS: use openHABian with SD card
ad1:
you’re a pro. but don’t expect much support here in the forum as there’s a bazillion of possibilities, which can - and probably will - interfere in installation and integration into openHAB. openHAB is a web application - but the app is dependend to OS-level bindings or execs, or …
ad2:
if you don’t want to make a big head on how to run things - download openHABian and use it. It will take care of all the hassle of installation, integrations and operation of the web app as is. including solutions for monitoring and other helpers.
Plus: it comes ootb with backup/restore and migration tools.
which brings me to the “redundancy”-problem. If you’re a pro and use solution 1 - you should know how to deal with problems on hardware, OS and perhaps a bit of application level. You’re good. openHAB leaves you enough room for that. Install it on bare metal, in docker, kubernetes or proxmox - you’ll deal with it. Then you can deploy your new openHAB including restoring your data in no time if there’s a problem or even have HA-solutions in place for that automagically.
if you don’t want that - fine. openHABian helps you with that. you can clone your SD card regularly to a spare SD and plug it in the next Pi if there’s a hardware problem (I’ve got a bunch of Pis from the beginning - and still not a single one died on me since years!) or if the SD Card wears out. You can pro-actively change SD cards every bunch of years - or rely on your backup strategy (also openHABian functionality).
So, my 2cents. and most importantly my 3rd cent: Make up your mind (and possible free it!) on how you use a smarthome in principle. My definition e.g. is: my home mustn’t be dependend on my software. It works without it. openHAB (as any smarthome-software btw) is only there for convenience. If for some reason or another I can’t have my openHAB for days - I’m still be able to heat my house, turn on/off light or anything. Of course, it’s not as comfortable and I have to manually (eeeeh) press light buttons and stuff - but it works. no need for “booting from a SSD because I heard, SD cards only last a month” or so. 
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I dont think the world is that black and white. Sometimes stuff is just incompatible, and sometimes even if you are a pro then things are just not worth it, i.e. too much effort. And no i dont want a SSD because i think a SD card dies in 1 month. In the end, life it one big trade-off. How much effort vs how many rewards.
What I personally want to avoid is the HW/SW dying on me and then losing my config&database. Next to that stability is essential. Speed is nice to have, and low cost is good. So this is gonne be a trade-off 
You mean just to flash it, or is it also workable as final solution?
It works for both solutions.
After you flashed the SSD on your PC you can simply plug it into Pi‘s USB connector or you can plug it into Pi‘s NVMeBase.
That wasn’t a black-and-white comment, though. If pros don’t want to put in the effort to get openHAB running in Docker/Windows/etc. (someone’s even running it on Android), they can still choose to use openHABian. It’s just that they have more “easy” options due to their expertise.
At this point, we’ve probably given you too much to think about. All you really need is a solid backup strategy, regardless of your storage type. An RPi4 is probably the easiest and least expensive “drop in and keep going” solution to replace your RPi2, but I can see the appeal of an RPi5.
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Not black & white at all. Just a description on what the openHAB ecosystem provides.
You can pick and chose yourself. Of course it could be grey.
That’s exactly the point.
- Backup your config/persistence (openHABian does that also)
And/or - Send your states to an external database and use its backup strategy. They’re here the minute you restore your config to a vanilla openHAB or mirrored SD
That’s it. 
Unless you’re about to put a bunch of other stuff, services and software on the same physical machine, an RPi4 is more than enough. Way more.
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All, for your reference, here’s the official hardware and OS recommendation for openHAB.
There’s also an official recommendation how to best operate your smart home server for best availability. (read the latest update here, for technical reasons, replacing the official docs pages can take some time)
Disclaimer: it’s just recommendations. Use whatever hardware you like in whatever way.
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Firstly, even though I am not an openhabian or rpi user, I appreciate all the work you’ve done on it, @mstormi.
On that page it says:
Running Raspberries off the internal SD card only may result in system instabilities as these memory cards can degrade quickly under openHAB’s use conditions (infamous ‘wearout’). When you choose to deploy openHABian, it’ll use the ZRAM feature to mitigate.
That might need to be rephrased a bit. It sounds to me like using an SD card is indeed a bad idea, and that’s contrary to the actual recommendation to use it instead of any other medium.
Perhaps it’s also worth mentioning that javascript is slow to load (but not to execute) on an rpi, and such issue doesn’t exist on an amd64 architecture. It would probably save people’s time if they had the choice of using a server instead.
This has always been one of the key ideas behind openHABian, now it’s also in the docs.
Ultimately however, it’s all about maximum service availability (i.e. your home working at all times).
That’s not the result of getting the best server hardware or by “cleverly” selecting SSD over SD/ZRAM.
Service availability is only ever the result of comprehensive system design and congenial operations that fit the hardware choice, see 2nd link in my previous post and and also the rationale behind explained here I already referred to earlier.
Probably, but people take away from reading that what they want to take anyway.
Either way, that’s the genuine docs, i.e. not part of openHABian docs. These also apply to e.g. generic Raspi OS on RPi 5. I know it’s not easy to understand the subtle differences and implications but if you read it like that it’s not an argument against (plain SD) Raspis but a strong argument in favor of openHABian in fact (as it provides ZRAM and SD mirroring).
Plus, that writing hasn’t been updated in a long time so yes time for an adequate update there, too.
EDIT: There’s an update on that already.
I like to call this the “build escalators, not elevators” principal. See https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mitch_hedberg_401954.
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that’s one hell of a quote. I’ll screenshot this to make a T-Shirt and use it as a background on all the Sprint Plannings!
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Hi Ramon,
this is my personal experience.
First Step was using an old 12V lead battery with a dropdown regulator and an old battery charger to ensure stable power supply. This resulted in uptimes > 1 year.
Second step was using an external SSD. Now the RPi is only down when I power it down.
Upgrading the RPi to a later model seems to be a good idea, too - depending on your setup.
Good luck!
ok so i ended up getting a rpi 5 8 gb, with a argone one v3 nvme case and installed a samsung 980 1TB into it. im almost done transferiing everything. I had some trouble with the mysql database to get that transferred to mariadb and then actually installing the jdbc mariadb driver. But after clearing the cache that seemed to work now. What is left to make a new copy of my db with the latest entries, then move my zwave and zigbee dongles over, and hope everything is then functional.
Thx for all the help and all the suggestions. The only thing left maybe is to get a UPS working with autoshutdown.
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