Moved to New Machine- Good Experience

[ArbWare]

Just an FYI for those who are thinking of upgrading hardware...

Depending on what you are moving from... the difference can be Huge!

HS doesn't have to have a High Powerered machine... but the right hardware can apparently make a huge difference.

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I've been running my HS3 since transitioning from HS2 (about 6 months ago??) on an old Lenovo t61 laptop from work..
.
The problem was... it would occaisionally.. (once every few days?) spike to 100% CPU usage for some Windows Kernel service... for about 5 minutes... then it would come back to normal.. but during that time it would loose connection to some of the USB over IP peripherals ...

I wasn't sure that this was a hardware or software problem... but i decided to upgrade the hardware to this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's a Fanless I5-5300 with 8 GB ram and 128 GB SSD.

The new machine has been operating flawless since installation last weekend. (5 days now?)

Machine is running Debian Jessie, and 3 x VirtualBox guests of:
HomeSeer3 - on Win 7, 3 GB ram
HS3 Speaker App - on Win XP with 1 GB ram
Squeezeplayer MP3 player (Server is on my NAS) - on Win XP with 640K ram.

Host machine has run rock solid at around 25% CPU with no heat (case Probably running 10 DegF above ambient in room.)

No Dropped USB over IP issues.

Moving to new machine was much easier than i thought it would be:
After installing the Debian OS, just exported/imported the virutalbox appliances from the Lenovo to the new machine..
Shut down old machine.. booted new machine...
Everything worked pretty flawlessly from the Boot... no configuration changes needed.

Homeseer Phone (way2Call) is working much better... (messages on old (lenovo) hardware were sometimes cut short.. or garbled... and Way2Call would sometimes need reboot/reset to get out of some unusable state.. i think these problems might have been due to CPU @ 100% issues)

Runnng the followong HSplugins:

Zwave
BLRF
BLRadar
BlAlarm
BlAudioMatrix
HomeKit Bridge
NetCam
Squeezebox
UltraMon3
Vista Alarm
WeatherXML


I gotta say.. if this continues to operate as it is.. it will be equal or better in reliability than my old setup of HS2 on a dedicated Duo-Core desktop running win XP. (no virtual machines)

I ran that for almost 5 years.. (and 3-5 before that on an older machine).. with very little maintenance required.


Not sure if this info will help anyone... but wanted to share.. If i had seen something like this earlier... i probably would have upgraded hardware sooner.

[Pete]

Thank you for the info Andrew.

I did something sort of similiar here.

Used a fast i3, 16Gb of RAM, m.Sata 128 Gb SSD on Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit.

It is running HS3 in Linux and using Wintel server VBs for SAPI and other plugins which talk fine to the same said HS3 Pro running on Linux.

The box is not stressed today. I have hardware connected to the Wintel VBs and the Linux base today via USB (digi), Serial (digi), quatech serial server and network.

Hodgepodge remote access is via RDP, VNC and KVM today. Manage the box with Webmin mostly and SSH as the VBs work fine without a touch.

Here is a quickie info view with Webmin. Doing a bunch of updates this morning.

I liked the new mITX footprint / case purchased a box o cases (10) and moving all of the servers to same case with mITX boards. It is a mini footprint 2 U case.

Using pico PSU's and commercial style mITX boards with 19 VDC laptop style power supplies here.

Preference lately is the BCM industrial type of motherboard. IE: just purchased two more last week. HS3 is running on an Asus iSeries motherboard.

[TeleFragger]

ive always been a OVER DOER on everything...

I usually run a quad core xeon with 8gb ram...
but im waiting for the new Server 2016 to come out then im upgrading again..

a newer style quad core xeon and 16gb ram...
os on ssd
6x2tb wd black drives (for now) running stablebit drive pool

i house 1 machine for
HS
DHCP/DNS/AD
Computer Backups
family pics
family movies
plex movie storage
music

now 1 more with a firewall....

[Pete]

I would add more NICs to the firewall for a media device network on it's own managed Gb switch.

Here do that for testing stuff (well Amazon echo for one).

Amazon Echo is connected to a unique AP which is connected to a separate port on the firewall.

The create rules for access to said network on your firewall. Similar to using a DMZ but keeping it separate. Better than VLANs.

[Rupp]

Just an FYI for those who are thinking of upgrading hardware...

Depending on what you are moving from... the difference can be Huge!

HS doesn't have to have a High Powerered machine... but the right hardware can apparently make a huge difference.

The user experience for HomeSeer is always better with more powerful/faster CPUs with more memory. It's just snappier with more horsepower.

[jhearty]

My $0.02. I'm running a Zee S2. I did have high CPU utilization problems a few weeks ago. Unable to determine source of issue. It stayed high even with all plugins shut down and event processing disabled. I finally gave up trying to find the source of the problem and rebooted it.

It has been quite snappy since then and running for a while, see my "uptime" output below for duration and loadavg's on the little 4 core Pi2, and fairly high number of devices and events. When I issue Alexa commands the lights turn on faster than the Echo can say "OK." Moral of the story on hardware seems to be "it depends what you are asking HomeSeer to do."

John

08:06:20 up 18 days, 10:44, 1 user, load average: 0.46, 0.44, 0.39

Current Date/Time: 10/7/2016 8:11:00 AM
HomeSeer Version: HS3 ZEE S2 Edition 3.0.0.293
Linux version: Linux HomeTrollerZeeS2 3.18.11-v7+ #781 SMP PREEMPT Tue Apr 21 18:07:59 BST 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux System Uptime: 18 Days 10 Hours 49 Minutes 26 Seconds
Number of Devices: 316
Number of Events: 280
Available Threads: 399

Enabled Plug-Ins
3.0.0.27: EasyTrigger
3.0.0.68: HSTouch Server
3.0.5959.34353: UltraM1G3
3.0.0.50: weatherXML
3.0.1.83: Z-Wave

[rmasonjr]

Yeah, mine is "snappy" as well. Rupp is likely making this statement without much in the way of real world usage/comparison.

"snappy" for me is that the lights come on quickly with no delay. Everything runs quickly and response time is great. In fact, here's a real world example:

https://youtu.be/juYlXHMh_1Q

[TeleFragger]

ive always been a OVER DOER on everything...

I usually run a quad core xeon with 8gb ram...
but im waiting for the new Server 2016 to come out then im upgrading again..

a newer style quad core xeon and 16gb ram...
os on ssd
6x2tb wd black drives (for now) running stablebit drive pool

i house 1 machine for
HS
DHCP/DNS/AD
Computer Backups
family pics
family movies
plex movie storage
music

now 1 more with a firewall....

well I just decided against putting HS on that box. A friend just handed me a box and I am going to use that.
i5 - 4570T @ 2.9ghz
8gb ram
128gb ssd
6 usb
1 serial

a nice and small box so should do me well...
When I mentioned the other day how she doesnt like the HA.. she said.. "I would like it if it was dependable" ... so that statement means it needs its own box...

[Pete]

Here have always run HS on it's own box. I did also use virtual builds of HS3 to test.

Deliberately pushed on the RPi2 until the brink.

Hence the update of HS3 lite (ZEE-2) to a micro PC / Pine64/2Gb testing. The iSeries box with 16Gb of RAM doesn't even sweat a little bit running HS3 Pro.

That and here mix automation in firmware (Leviton Omni Pro 2) and software. I do have Zigbee running now on the Leviton panel and can manage it with the HS3 Omni plugin (thank you Rob!). (IE: there have X10 (via XTB), UPB, Z-Wave (HS3 replicate) and Zigbee which is the same as on HS3 except for Zigbee direct.