Home Assistant deployment and management notes using Docker. The main limitation for the Docker version of Home Assistant is that additional application aren’t installable through the GUI and must be installed separately.

Deploy

Create directory /opt/homeassistant/ and create the following docker-compose.yml file into it. Available image tags can be checked here.

services:
  homeassistant:
    container_name: homeassistant
    image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:2026.10"
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /opt/homeassistant/config:/config
      - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro
    privileged: true
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Zurich

Start the service with docker compose up --detach and it’s done !

Update

It is usually as simple as pulling the newest docker image. Doing a full backup beforehand may be a good idea.

cd /opt/homeassistant/

# Stop the service
# Note: target image could be downloaded in advance
docker compose down

# (optional) Set the docker image tag to wanted version
nano docker-compose.yml

# Pull the latest image according to your tag
# Note: you can pull it before stopping HA to drastically reduce downtime
docker image pull ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:wanted_version

# Start the container again and check everything works again
docker compose up --detach

# Cleanup (careless way)
docker image prune -a

# Cleanup (careful way)
docker image ls
docker image rm ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:the_unused_version

Backup

Once configured through the GUI, automatic backup files land in /opt/homeassistant/config/backups/.

The following rsync command can be used to pull them on the backup server.

rsync --verbose your_user@homeassistant_server:/opt/homeassistant/config/backups/* /local/backup/dir/for/homeassistant/

Those backup file can be restored on any fresh setup of HA, as long as versions are compatible and the backup key still is in your possession.