Install and use the 1.9 Astro binding. You may need to enable “Include Legacy 1.x bindings” for it to show up.
Only one program can access the zwave controller at a time so I’m afraid you have to move zwave over all at once. You can’t have both running at the same time.
I’d recommend Habmin. But there is no “proper” way, just alternative ways.
The Rules engine is largely unchanged so you still need to these proxys. In case you haven’t seen it:
I recommend using a combination of persistence with a restore on startup and a System started rule. The link above shows a System started rule to do what you describe. The link below shows a way to setup persistence. You can just use the MapDB portion of the tutorial if all you want is restoreOnStartup.
