#21 Which Home Assistant Installation is more EXPENSIVE to run? Docker, Virtual Machine, and Native

In this video, we will compare the power consumption of three different installations of Home Assistant setup - Docker, Virtual Machine, and Native (Generic x86-64 ) . We will measure the power consumption of each installation over a period of time and provide a detailed analysis of the results. By the end of the video, you will have a better understanding of the impact of the installation method on the power consumption of Home Assistant.
Thank you for watching!
▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Intro & summary
0:45 - Test Conditions
1:13 - Virtual machine installation measurements
5:42 - Docker installation measurements
7:09- Native (Generic x86-64 ) installation
8:59 - Summary and outcome
11:08 - Outro

[@anonymoususer6448]

I think I found my new top-favorite channel ! I love the engineering mindset, the analysis you make and the extra mile that you go, like making tables to compare results etc... Love it ! BTW: I'm still on a Raspberry PI, mainly because of power consumption. I should measure it, I guess my power supply takes quite a bit of power as well. My expectation is between 5W and 10W. /chrisV

[@makersfunduck]

Thank you so much for your kind words. Measuring your power usage is a great idea, and it's always interesting to see how different energy usage between different setups.

[@AdityaMehendale]

Perfect comparison! Enough detail without losing sight of the big picture. Doesn't seem like much, but I think (of you have a HDD in the MacMini) that disabling or force-idling the HDD would save another ~5W. Most old laptops are good in this regard, as they are optimized for battery-operation. I was surprised by the ~ 20W power-draw - was expecting sth. around 10W. Considering the monthly energy-bills, an off-site ("Cloud-based") solution doesn't sound so bad, privacy considerations notwithstanding...

[@makersfunduck]

I think that totally make sense. It has an old HDD, and they need between 6 and 15 Watts of power whereas an SSD needs only between 2 and 5 Watts. So investing an SSD would definetely pay itself out.

[@darknessblades]

My X86 homeasistant setup running on a Minisforum UN100C barely consumes 12W during peak load. average usage is around 7-9W

[@ddoice]

Great! There's a gnome extension that allows you to limit the CPU speed, with that control you can lower even more the docker consumption.

[@makersfunduck]

Thanks. Do you know the name of the extension?

[@NithinJune]

i’m pretty sure a Mac Mini is the most expensive hardware to run it on 😅

[@NithinJune]

oh it’s a really really old mac mini

[@NithinJune]

i’m sure a more efficient device would have different behavior