# Home Assistant Performance Fix & Infrastructure Migration

## Problem Summary

Home Assistant at `ha.hideawaygaming.com.au` (HAOS 2026.5.3) periodically becomes unresponsive. Because critical infrastructure services (AdGuard DNS, Tailscale VPN, Guacamole RDP) all run as HA add-ons inside the same VM, any HA freeze causes house-wide network and access failures.

### Root Causes Identified

| Issue | Impact |
|-------|--------|
| Memory at 87% (4.45 GB) | VM swaps under load → unresponsive |
| 2,330 entities, 775 unavailable (33%) | Wasted memory and CPU tracking stale entities |
| ~1,007 state changes/hour (16.8/min) | Recorder DB I/O bottleneck |
| browser_mod: 228 entities (200 stale) | Biggest source of entity bloat |
| iCloud3: 1,000+ state changes/4hr | Aggressive polling floods state machine |
| Frigate occupancy flapping ~97x/hr | Detection zones too sensitive |
| 3 time sensors × 60 changes/hr = 720/hr | Pointless recorder writes |
| Guacamole using 25% CPU / 9% RAM | Heavy add-on consuming HA resources |
| AdGuard (network DNS) inside HA | Single point of failure |

---

## Fix Plan (Priority Order)

### Phase 1: Immediate — Recorder Exclude (10 minutes)

Apply `recorder_exclude.yaml` to stop recording high-churn, low-value entities.

**Steps:**

1. SSH into HAOS or use the File Editor add-on
2. Open `/config/configuration.yaml`
3. If you already have a `recorder:` section, merge the excludes from `recorder_exclude.yaml` into it
4. If you don't have one, copy the entire contents of `recorder_exclude.yaml` into `configuration.yaml`
5. Restart HA: Settings → System → Restart

**Expected impact:** ~2,500 fewer state changes recorded per hour, significant reduction in disk I/O and memory usage.

### Phase 2: Immediate — Entity Cleanup (20 minutes)

**browser_mod stale sessions:**
1. Go to Developer Tools → Services
2. For each stale browser_mod entity, call the service to unregister it
3. Alternatively: Settings → Devices & Services → browser_mod → Remove stale device entries
4. Target: reduce from 228 to ~20-30 active entities

**Plex media player cleanup:**
1. Settings → Devices & Services → Plex
2. Click through each device — delete any showing as "Unavailable"
3. Target: reduce from 59 to ~5-10 active clients

**Pioneer VSX-832 duplicates:**
1. Settings → Devices & Services → Onkyo
2. You should see multiple "Pioneer VSX-832" devices
3. Keep only the working one (likely the one showing state "off" or "on")
4. Delete the rest (showing "unavailable")
5. Target: reduce from 7 to 1-2 entities

**F1 Sensor (off-season):**
1. Settings → Devices & Services → F1 Sensor
2. Consider disabling the integration during off-season
3. Or leave it — the recorder exclude will prevent it writing history
4. 76 entities, 42 currently unavailable

### Phase 3: Tune Noisy Integrations (15 minutes)

**iCloud3 — reduce polling frequency:**
1. iCloud3 config (via HA integrations or config file)
2. Increase `inzone_interval` from default to 30-60 minutes
3. Increase general polling interval
4. This alone cuts ~1,000 state changes per 4 hours

**Frigate — fix driveway zone flapping:**
1. In your Frigate config, for the driveway camera zones:
   - Increase `min_area` on car detection (currently triggering on shadows/reflections)
   - Add `inactivity_timeout: 30` to prevent rapid on/off toggling
   - Consider disabling `cat` and `dog` detection on the driveway if not needed
2. The driveway_car_occupancy and driveway_pavement_car_occupancy are toggling ~97x/hour each

**Time sensors — remove duplicates:**
1. If `sensor.time`, `sensor.time_2`, and `sensor.date_time` are defined in `configuration.yaml` under `sensor:` → `platform: time_date`, remove the duplicates
2. Keep only one if needed for automations, or rely on HA's built-in `now()` in templates instead

**UpdatePowerUsageFast automation:**
1. Settings → Automations → UpdatePowerUsageFast
2. Change the time pattern trigger from every 1 minute to every 5 minutes
3. Cuts 192 automation runs per hour

### Phase 4: Increase VM Memory (5 minutes)

On the Proxmox host:
1. Shut down the HAOS VM (or hot-plug if supported)
2. Increase RAM from current allocation to **8 GB**
3. HAL-HOST has 134 GB total with 78% used — there's headroom
4. Start the VM

### Phase 5: Migrate AdGuard to LXC (30 minutes)

**This is the most important architectural change.** Network DNS must not depend on HA stability.

See `setup-adguard-lxc.sh` — run on the Proxmox host.

```bash
# Copy to Proxmox host
scp setup-adguard-lxc.sh root@10.0.0.x:/root/

# Run it (default CT ID 120, or pass custom)
ssh root@10.0.0.x
chmod +x /root/setup-adguard-lxc.sh
/root/setup-adguard-lxc.sh 120
```

**Post-setup migration:**
1. Access new AdGuard at `http://10.0.0.53:80`
2. Complete the setup wizard
3. Export config from HA's AdGuard add-on web UI and import to new instance
4. Migrate filter lists, client settings, parental controls, DNS rewrites
5. Test: `nslookup google.com 10.0.0.53`
6. Update OPNsense DHCP: change DNS from `10.0.0.55` to `10.0.0.53`
7. Wait 24 hours, confirm stability
8. Stop HA AdGuard add-on
9. Optionally re-add HA AdGuard integration pointing to `10.0.0.53` for dashboard stats

**NPM reverse proxy (optional):**
- Add proxy host in NPM (10.0.0.54):
  - Domain: `adguard.hideawaygaming.com.au`
  - Forward: `http://10.0.0.53:80`
  - SSL via Let's Encrypt

### Phase 6: Migrate Guacamole to LXC (30 minutes)

See `setup-guacamole-lxc.sh` — run on the Proxmox host.

```bash
scp setup-guacamole-lxc.sh root@10.0.0.x:/root/
ssh root@10.0.0.x
chmod +x /root/setup-guacamole-lxc.sh
/root/setup-guacamole-lxc.sh 121
```

**Post-setup migration:**
1. Access new Guacamole at `http://10.0.0.52:8080/guacamole/`
2. Login with `guacadmin` / `guacadmin` — **change password immediately**
3. Re-create your RDP connections (hostname, port 3389, credentials)
4. Re-create any user accounts
5. Set up NPM reverse proxy with WebSocket support
6. Test all RDP connections
7. Stop HA Guacamole add-on

**NPM reverse proxy:**
- Domain: `guac.hideawaygaming.com.au`
- Forward: `http://10.0.0.52:8080`
- Custom location: `/guacamole/`
- **Enable WebSocket support** (critical for RDP streaming)

---

## Network Architecture After Migration

```
                    Internet
                       │
                  ┌────┴────┐
                  │ OPNsense │  10.0.0.254
                  │ Gateway  │
                  └────┬────┘
                       │
        ┌──────────────┼──────────────┐
        │              │              │
   ┌────┴────┐   ┌────┴────┐   ┌────┴────┐
   │ AdGuard │   │   NPM   │   │  HAOS   │
   │  (LXC)  │   │  (LXC)  │   │  (VM)   │
   │ .0.53   │   │ .0.54   │   │ .0.55   │
   │ DNS 53  │   │ HTTP/S  │   │ HA only │
   └─────────┘   └─────────┘   └────┬────┘
                                     │
        ┌──────────────┬─────────────┘
        │              │
   ┌────┴────┐   ┌────┴────┐
   │  Guac   │   │Tailscale│
   │  (LXC)  │   │(remains │
   │ .0.52   │   │ in HA)  │
   │ RDP GW  │   └─────────┘
   └─────────┘
```

Tailscale stays in HA since it's lightweight and tightly integrated with HA's remote access. AdGuard and Guacamole are now independent — HA can restart without taking down DNS or RDP access.

---

## Expected Results

| Metric | Before | After |
|--------|--------|-------|
| HA Memory | 87% (4.45 GB) | ~50-60% (with 8 GB allocated) |
| Entities | 2,330 (775 unavailable) | ~1,800 (fewer stale) |
| State changes/hr | ~1,007 | ~300-400 |
| Recorder writes/hr | ~1,007 | ~200-300 (excludes applied) |
| DNS failure on HA crash | Yes | No (independent LXC) |
| RDP failure on HA crash | Yes | No (independent LXC) |
| Guacamole CPU in HA | 25% | 0% (moved out) |
| Guacamole RAM in HA | 9% | 0% (moved out) |

---

## Files in This Repository

| File | Purpose |
|------|---------|
| `recorder_exclude.yaml` | Recorder exclude config — merge into `configuration.yaml` |
| `setup-adguard-lxc.sh` | Proxmox script to create AdGuard Home LXC |
| `setup-guacamole-lxc.sh` | Proxmox script to create Guacamole LXC |
| `README.md` | This file |