The jobs that start after Home Assistant is already running: backups you can actually restore, updates that do not ruin a Friday night, and a short troubleshooting order when something disappears. It complements the existing Getting started with Home Assistant thread and the first automation thread.
Complexity
Beginner to moderate. You should already have a working Home Assistant install (the official docs current at research time were for the 2026.11 series).
1. Backups you can restore
Official documentation: Home Assistant backups (also described in the backup emergency kit notes).
- Create a backup before you update, and after any integration or YAML change you would hate to redo.
- Store at least one copy off the same SD card or disk as Home Assistant — a network share, a second disk, or an official supported backup location. A backup that lives only on the card that just failed is not a backup.
- If the backup is encrypted, record the encryption key in the official emergency-kit flow and keep it somewhere you can reach when the host is dead. Without that key, the backup may be unreadable.
- Practice a restore once on a spare or a VM, not for the first time during an outage.
- Read the release notes for the version you are jumping to (core, OS, and Supervisor if you use Home Assistant OS).
- Update in this spirit: backup first; update when you are at home and can walk to a panel; do not stack OS, core, add-on and firmware updates in one unattended hour.
- Breaking changes are called out in the official blog and release notes — search for the integration you rely on (Z-Wave, Matter, a vendor cloud).
- If you run add-ons or HACS components, check those projects too. A community integration can lag a core change.
When a device or automation "just stopped":
- Is Home Assistant itself up? Settings, System, and the logs. A failed start after an update is a restore-or-rollback job, not a new dashboard job.
- Is the device on the network? Ping or check DHCP. VLAN and Wi-Fi isolation issues are often mistaken for integration bugs (see the IoT VLAN thread in Networking & VLANs).
- Did the integration need a re-auth, a new API key, or a firmware change on the device?
- For automations: traces and the official automation troubleshooting docs. Confirm the trigger fired, then the condition, then the action.
- One change at a time. Rolling back a backup is cleaner than editing three YAML files while you are guessing.
- Keep a physical or local way to operate lights and HVAC if the hub is down.
- Do not expose the Home Assistant UI or unauthenticated device ports to the internet "just to get it working on the phone". Use the official companion app and a considered remote-access method.
- Name devices once, then use those names in dashboards and automations, so a failed entity is obvious.
Backups
Backup emergency kit
Automation troubleshooting
Getting started with Home Assistant
Researched from official documentation on 15 November 2026 (Australia/Sydney). This is a planning and how-to guide, not a claim that the exact hardware combination was assembled and tested on a live site. Please correct anything that has moved on.