Parallel to the development system that I am currently using, I want to maintain another known stable openhab release, that can be used by non technical people at any time.
My main needs for the stable system are to support a set of zwave devices including a door lock, so preferably ot should support secure zwave.
So far I only have an unstable release (latest openhab2 snapshot). It is used for development and testing of new features, and resolving known problems, and as such, the system is mostly in engineering mode, i.e. down and never fully operable to be used by non-technical people.
To buy in my family members, I need to present a stable openhab system that works 24/7. It can have limitations, but what it does it needs to do reliably 99% of the time.
I have the following hardware, that can be used for the stable openhab server
Modern PC, with ubuntu 16.04 64 bit
Synology Disk Station
I am currently using the ubuntu 16.04 64 PC for the development version
For the stable release I thought of using any of the following platforms
virtualbox within the PC, preferably via vagrant
Synology machine
Does anybody have a rock-solid openhab system that works flawlessly 24/7 for e.g. months?
If so, I would like to know:
what is the experience, in terms of reliability, up-time, etcā¦ with this rock-solid system, i.e. what should the expectations be?
on what platform and hardware does it run?
ā I had trouble with the USB zwave stick within virtualbox (ubuntu 14 32 bit) in Windows 7 host, e.g. clicking on switch in web interface, did not actually turn the light on/off
ā people reported problems with virtual machine like in here
what openhab version?
ā at the moment, the stable oh2 release does not support secured zwave
ā I donāt mind using openhab1, if it is more stable than openhab2
I currently run OpenHAB on my Synology (there is a specific topic on this). If you have a Synology, you know this is a very stable solution. An attention point is that, when you upgrade/patch your Synology to a higher DSM, you often need to reboot, reducing (OpenHAB) uptime. In my case, I use my Synology for many other things as well (e.g. Plex Media Server), so this could negatively impact OpenHAB performance (however, this has not yet happened).
I think stability/reliability does not only come from hardware, but also software. For using OpenHAB at a Synology, I see this as an attention point. There is no clear upgrade-process (no apt-get available) on Synology for OpenHAB, and sometimes you need to be a bit creative to get additional software running. E.g. InfluxDB (for persistence) runs via a Docker image. Thatās why I am reconsidering to use my Synology for OpenHAB.
Many people here use Raspberry Pi. The good thing is that in terms of software, many things are standardized. With OpenHABian it is almost āplug and playā. An attention point here is that the SD card could get corrupted after a while, if you have a lot of read/writes (e.g. with persistence services). That is a no-go for me. Alternatively, you could boot OpenHABian via an SSD which is much more reliable. But the firmware needed for that is still beta. I guess that conflicts with the requirement āstable/reliableā.
So in terms of hardware, I am still looking for a good solution. Iāll keep an eye on this topic.
In terms of OpenHAB version, I use a snapshot version of OpenHAB 2.1. I have read in earlier posts that it has the same reliability as OpenHAB 2.0. I did not consider a 1.x version. They might be more stable, but there are some fundamental differences between the 1.x and the 2.x and I didnāt want to have all that rework when upgrading to 2.x at some point in time. So far, my experience with OpenHAB 2.1 has been good in terms of reliability.
9 months ago, I switched from a Raspberry Pi 3 to a regular laptop (I was worried about the SD Cards) and since then, I have rebooted my system only once. Current uptime shows 120 days.
Platform: Medium/Low Cost (~400 ā¬) Laptop (Intel CPU i5-6200U, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Linux Debian Jessie) (> Link)
OH2: Snapshot (weekly updatesā¦ yes, OH2 is restarted when upgrading)
Z-Wave: Snapshot with Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5
I liked the low cost laptop solution since:
a) It can survive a power loss (I still havenāt invested in a UPS)
b) I use it as my main Linux Server environment to run several other stuff (Apache2, Samba, MQTT, InfluxDB, MySQL, Grafana, Unifi Video, Unifi Controller, Owntracks recorder, etc, etc) also on it
c) It doesnāt take too much space with the lid closed and the power consumption is small
It is rock-solid
Ps: In parallel, I still run OH 2.0.0 Release Build on the rPi3 (although I donāt use itā¦ I have it there for backup reasons) and it has been up and running OH2 for months also.
I also run an deployment- and a productive environment.
While my deployment is a virtual machine on my hyper-V Server, my productive environment runs on an industrial-PC, which is designed for 24/7 with enough power.
I use an Pokini F itās up ānā running since 5 month. Compared to my privious system (RPI 3) its much faster at the same power consumation (aproxā¦)
installed with Ubuntu 16.04 Server and OH2 stable installation. Iām not sure, because I donāt need secure zWave, but I think OH1 doesnāt support secure classes.
Also the zWay binding requires zWav hardware (Razberry board oder zWay stick). This binding only enables communication between OH and the zWay server.
