Run Home Assistant on VMware ESXi

Updated: August 19, 2023. Debian 11 is not supported any more for running Home Assistant Supervised. For a supported configuration, you need Debian 12. The steps in this blog are updated to install Home Assistant as Debian 12 VM in VMware ESXi.

Updated: December 2, 2022. Debian 10 is not supported any more for running Home Assistant Supervised. For a supported configuration, you need Debian 11 (Bullseye). The steps in this blog are updated to install Home Assistant as Debian 11 VM in VMware ESXi.

Home Assistant Supervised provides the full Home Assistant experience on a regular operating system. The Supervisor is not just an application but it is a full appliance that manages the whole system. Home Assistant supervised is only supported on a Debian 12 Operating System. Below are the steps described on how to install Home Assistant Supervised as Virtual Machine on a Debian 11 (Bullseye) Operating System in VMware ESXi.

Configure the Virtual Machine hardware specifications

Download the debian-live-12.1.0-amd64-standard.iso, Link
Make a connection to the ESXi host: https://<ip-address>/ui
Upload the Debian ISO to a datastore
Create a new virtual machine with the following specifications:
- Name: <Name of the VM>
- Compatibility: Default (ESXi 8 and later)
- Guest OS family: Linux
- Guest OS version: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (64-bit)
- Storage: datastore with more than 30 GB of free space
- CPUs: 2
- Memory: 2048 MB
- Hard disk 1: 40 GB
  - Disk Provisioning: Thin provisioned
- SCSI Controller 0: VMware Paravirtual
- USB controller 1: USB 2.0 or 3.0 depending on the ESXi hardware
- Network adapter 1: Select the port group
  - Adapter type: E1000e
- CD/DVD Drive 1: Datastore ISO file
  - Browse to the Debian ISO
  - Connect at Power: checked
- Video Card: Default settings
- Next
- Finish
- Power on the VM
- Open a console session

The VM is now configured with a paravirtualized SCSI controller (PVSCSI) and VMXNET3 Virtual NIC.

Install Debian 12 as VM on VMware ESXi

Installer Menu: Start Installer
Language: English
Location: Other, Europe, Netherlands
Locales: United States
Keymap: American English
Enter the hostname: ha-deb12-01
Domain name: <domain name>
Root password: <Enter the root password>
Full Name for the user:<Full name>
User name: <username>
Choose Password for the new user: <Enter the root password>
Partition Disks: Guided – Use the entire disk and set up LVM
- Select disk to partition: SCSI1 (0,0,0) – 32,2 GB VMware Virtual Disk
- Partition scheme: All files in one partition (recommended for new users)
- Write the changes to disk and configure LVM: Yes
- Amount of volume group to use for guided partitioning: 42.4 GB
- Select: Continue
- Write changes to disks: Yes
Configure the Package manager: Yes
Debian archive mirror country: Select the archive mirror country nearby. I selected Netherlands
Debian archive mirror: deb.debian.org
HTTP Proxy: Leave empty and select continue
Participate in the package usage survey: No
Software selection:
- Check: SSH server and standard system utilities
- Uncheck: Debian desktop environment
- Uncheck: GNOME
Install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record. Yes
Device for boot loader installation? /dev/sda
Installation is complete.
- Finish the installation: Continue

The Debian VM will be rebooted and is ready for use. After the installation, open a console session and log in.

Enable SSH

sudo apt install openssh-server
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Enable port 22 and save the file

systemctl restart ssh

Enable Sudo on the user account

nano /etc/sudoers

Save

Under the “User privilege specification” add the user account created during the Debian installation. Replace the <username> with the name of the user you entered in the installation phase.

username ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Press CTRL + X to save the file. Now it is possible to use the sudo account under your username.

exit
sudo -i

More information: How to Install and Enable SSH on Debian 12/11/10 – LinuxCapable

Update all Debian packages

apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y

Find the IPv4 address of the VM by using the command:

VMware Tools is included in the Debian distribution so you don’t need to install VMware Tools package. Find the IP address by using the following command:

ifconfig ens192

Look for the inet address. That’s the IP address.

Make an SSH connection to the VM

Connect using SSH to the IP address of the Debian VM by using Putty for example.

sudo -i

Install the required packages

apt-get install \
apparmor \
jq \
wget \
curl \
udisks2 \
libglib2.0-bin \
network-manager \
dbus \
lsb-release \
systemd-journal-remote -y

Install Docker-CE

curl -fsSL get.docker.com | sh

Install the latest Agent

The latest agents can be found here:
https://github.com/home-assistant/os-agent/releases/latest

Replace the “os-agent_1.5.1_linux_x86_64.deb” with the agent version you downloaded.

wget https://github.com/home-assistant/os-agent/releases/download/1.5.1/os-agent_1.5.1_linux_x86_64.deb
dpkg -i os-agent_1.5.1_linux_x86_64.deb

You can check if the installation was successful by running the following command.

gdbus introspect --system --dest io.hass.os --object-path /io/hass/os

This should not return an error.

Install Home Assistant Supervised Debian Package

wget https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer/releases/latest/download/homeassistant-supervised.deb
dpkg -i homeassistant-supervised.deb

A reboot of the Debian VM is necessary.

reboot

After the reboot, you need to wait (between 1 and 20 minutes) for the initial Home Assistant configuration. With the command “docker ps” you can view the status of the Docker containers. The status must be Up xx minutes.

Connect to Hass.io: http://;:8123