Recently I tried out Home Assistant. I have several smart devices at home and controlled them with Google Assistant so far. I have Google Hubs or Speakers in every room and a week ago i replaced the last bulbs to smart ones.
In the first place I was running Home Assistant in a virtualbox, wich can be achieved by simply downloading "startup-ready" images for Virtualbox, VMware and Hyper-V here.
Many things are there out of the box and configuration is really made as easy as possible. So I decided to integrate Home Server in my household. There are several ways to install/host HA and first I tought about using an older Computer I have at home. But I wanted to avoid having more Servers making many noise at night and preferred a small, quiet box. HA can be installed on a Raspberry Pi - so I checked for this. I also came by a device called "Home Assistant Green" wich is basically comparable to a Raspberry. It comes with power supply and everything needed to just boot up the system. Comparing prices this was the best option and I ordered the device online. Few days later my new tool arrived and was plugged into my network fast and easy.
I tried out many of the possibilities while waiting for my HA green to arrive and felt like I was ready to setup everything according my likings. Here's the story about configuring and integrating HA into my setup.