If you’ve been holding off on running Home Assistant properly because you didn’t want to dedicate a Raspberry Pi or buy a NUC just to run it, there’s a good chance the answer is already sitting on your network — your NAS.

And there’s one thing this method gets you that a plain container install never will: full physical USB hardware passthrough, so your Zigbee radio works exactly like it would on dedicated hardware. I’ll show you exactly how to wire that up near the end of this video.

Because the difference between running Home Assistant Core in a container and running the full Home Assistant OS is the difference between a stripped-down install and the whole platform — supervisor, app store, backups, the works.

Today I’m installing Home Assistant OS as a virtual machine on the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT, with full app support and a real Zigbee adapter passed straight through to it. This UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT has been sent to me by UGREEN to test, and they had no influence on what I’m saying in this video.

If this video helps you out, a like and a subscribe would genuinely mean a lot to me.

We’re going to grab the right image, build the VM with the settings that actually matter, get it booted and onboarded, and then pass through a USB Zigbee stick so you’ve got a proper smart home hub running on hardware you already own.

Before we touch any config, here’s what you’ll need.

🛒 Buy the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT here:

👉 UGREEN EU Official Website
NAS product collection page: https://nas.eu.ugreen.com/o8J9gS
UGREEN DXP4800 GT direct link: https://nas.eu.ugreen.com/iCGmlG
Valid period: Jul 20, 2026 – Aug 10, 2026
Discount rate: 20% off
Exclusive discount code: SHJ4800GT20

👉 UGREEN Amazon US
NAS product collection page: https://amzn.to/45cOGHK
UGREEN DXP4800 GT direct link: https://amzn.to/4yvrCS7
Valid period: Jul 20, 2026 – Aug 10, 2026
Discount rate: 20% off
Exclusive discount code: DXP4800GTSM

👉 UGREEN Amazon NL: https://amzn.to/4ftudDz
👉 UGREEN Amazon DE: https://amzn.to/4fiK9It
👉 UGREEN Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/4wiv1Cs

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⭐⭐⭐ NOTE: ⭐⭐⭐

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Ed

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PREREQUISITES

You’ll need a UGREEN NAS running U.G.O.S. Pro, with the Virtual Machine app already installed from the App Center — that part takes two minutes if you haven’t done it yet. At first, I wanted to install Proxmox on this NAS, but after reading about the options, I decided to go with the Virtual Machine route. And I’m glad I did. It’s so much easier than using Proxmox on your NAS!
You’ll also need access to the U.G.O.S. Pro web interface specifically, not just the desktop app, because some of the VM settings we need simply don’t work properly from the app. And you’ll want at least one volume with a reasonable amount of free space — I’m giving mine 128 gigabytes, though the default is 32.

If you want the Zigbee passthrough part at the end, you’ll also need a USB Zigbee or Thread adapter — I’m using a Sonoff Zigbee USB Dongle Plus, but any USB radio your NAS can see will work the same way.

Got all that? Good — before we start clicking around, let’s talk about what’s actually happening under the hood, because it’ll make the next few steps click a lot faster.

THE CONCEPT

Home Assistant OS isn’t just Home Assistant — it’s a full operating system built around Home Assistant, with a supervisor layer that manages apps, backups, and updates for you. Run Home Assistant as a bare container and you lose that supervisor layer entirely, along with the app store. Run it as a full virtual machine instead, and U.G.O.S. Pro gives it its own slice of CPU, RAM, and — critically — the ability to see real USB hardware plugged into the NAS.

That last part is what makes this worth doing properly. A NAS’s virtual machine app can pass a physical USB device straight through to the guest OS, so from Home Assistant’s point of view, a Zigbee stick plugged into your NAS looks exactly like one plugged into a dedicated mini PC. Once that clicks, the steps below are going to make a lot more sense than if you’d just copied them blind. Let’s build it.

STEP-BY-STEP WALKTHROUGH

Step 1 — Get the right image.

Home Assistant OS images aren’t hosted on the Home Assistant website — they live on GitHub, under the operating-system repository. I’ll drop the link in the description. Open the Releases section and grab the latest release — 18.1 at the time I recorded this, though yours may be newer. Scroll down to Assets and look specifically for the file that ends in ova-release number.vdi.zip. That’s the VirtualBox-compatible disk image U.G.O.S. Pro needs — download that one.

The common mistake here is grabbing the wrong image type — there are raw, VMDK, and VDI variants in that same Assets list for different platforms. If U.G.O.S. Pro refuses to import it later, this is almost always why.

Step 2 — Extract the archive.

Once it’s downloaded, extract the zip file. You’ll be left with a single .vdi file — that’s the actual disk image you’ll upload to the NAS.

Step 3 — Import the VM.

Open the Virtual Machine app, then go to New VM and choose Import Virtual Machine. Select Import from a disk file, then Choose a disk image, and pick Upload image from local computer. Select the .vdi file you extracted, give it a name — I called mine HAOS — and confirm. It’ll take a few minutes to upload, so let that finish before moving on.

[ON-SCREEN: config for Step 3]

Import method: Import from disk file
Disk image source: Upload from local computer
File: haos_ova-17.3.vdi
Name: HAOS

Once it’s uploaded, you can select it straight from the dropdown list — confirmation that the upload actually worked.

Step 4 — Choose where it lives.

Click Next, then pick which volume you want the VM installed on. If you’ve only got one volume, this is a formality — click Next again.

Step 5 — Set the VM’s core resources.

Name the VM — I went with Home Assistant OS — and set the system type to Linux. Give it 2 CPU cores and 4 gigabytes of RAM. Leave the disk at the default 32 gigabytes for now; we’ll grow that in a minute. For networking, set it to the vNet bridge that matches the physical Ethernet port your cable is actually plugged into — if you’re on port one instead of port zero, for example, pick the bridge for port one, or the VM simply won’t get an IP address.

VM name: Home Assistant OS
System type: Linux
CPU: 2 cores
RAM: 4 GB
Disk: 32 GB (default)
Network: vNet bridge matching your active Ethernet port

Step 6 — The two settings that actually matter.

Open Advanced settings. First, enable the USB controller — USB 2.0 is enough for a Zigbee stick. Second, and this is the one people miss: set the bootstrap or boot type to UEFI. Home Assistant OS won’t boot on a legacy BIOS boot type, so this isn’t optional. Turn on Auto-start too, so the VM comes up automatically whenever the NAS reboots. Click Done, but don’t start the VM yet.

USB controller: Enabled (USB 2.0)
Bootstrap / boot type: UEFI
Auto-start: On

Step 7 — Resize the disk before first boot.

With the VM created but not running, go to its Settings, then the disk image, and increase the storage. The default 32 gigabytes will technically work, but I’d give it more room up front — I bumped mine to 128 gigabytes and applied the change. It’s much easier to do this now than to resize a running system later.

Step 8 — Boot it and onboard.

Now start the VM. Click the three dots next to it and choose Connect from new page to open the console, and you’ll see the full Home Assistant OS boot process happen in real time. Once it settles, the console screen will display an IP address — that’s the one thing you actually need to write down.

Open a browser and go to that IP address on port 8123 — so something like 192.168.68.186:8123. That loads the Home Assistant onboarding screen. Work through Create My Smart Home, set up your user account, and set your location. That’s it: Home Assistant is up and running.

You’ll know it worked the moment the main Home Assistant dashboard loads instead of a connection error — that’s your confirmation the VM, the network bridge, and the boot type were all set correctly.

If you followed along exactly, this should be working right now. If it isn’t, here’s where to look.

TROUBLESHOOTING / COMMON PITFALLS

If the import fails or the VM won’t boot at all, double-check you actually downloaded the .vdi variant from GitHub and not one of the raw or VMDK images sitting in the same Assets list.

If the VM boots but you can never reach it at any IP address, it’s almost always the network bridge — go back into the VM’s network settings and make sure it’s bound to the vNet bridge for the physical port your cable is in, not the default one.

If Home Assistant OS refuses to boot past a black screen, check the bootstrap type again — it has to be UEFI, not legacy BIOS. This one setting trips up more people than everything else in this guide combined.

Once you’ve got this running reliably, there’s a way to take it further that most container installs simply can’t do — but first, a quick word.

TAKING IT FURTHER

Remember I said this VM approach gets you real USB hardware passthrough? Here’s exactly how. Take a USB Zigbee or Thread adapter — I’m using a Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus — and plug it directly into the NAS. Make sure you use a USB extension cable!

Head back into U.G.O.S. Pro, open the Virtual Machine app, and edit the settings for your Home Assistant VM. Go to Advanced and choose Add USB Device — you should see your adapter listed by name, mine showed up as Silicon Labs Sonoff Zigbee. Select it and apply.

VM Settings → Advanced → Add USB Device
Device: Silicon Labs Sonoff Zigbee (or your adapter's name)
Apply, then wait for the setting to take effect

Back in Home Assistant, go to Settings, then Devices and Services. Within a few seconds it should detect the Sonoff Zigbee Dongle on its own. Add it. Forming a fresh Zigbee network takes a couple of minutes, so don’t panic if nothing happens instantly.

Once it’s done, you’ve got a genuine Zigbee network running through ZHA, plus the full Home Assistant app store available to you — real hardware integration, not a stripped-down container install. That’s the version I’d actually recommend running long-term. If you’d like to use Zigbee2MQTT instead, please watch this video where I explain how to install Zigbee2MQTT perfectly!

RESTORE BACKUP

Now, the last thing that I will show you is how to restore your backup. Go to the Home Assistant backup page and upload your saved backup. After uploading, click your manual backup and select everything that you’d like to restore. Then click Restore, and your Home Assistant backup is getting restored.
After that, log in and your old environment is live! Supercool!

WRAP-UP

So that’s Home Assistant OS running as a full virtual machine on the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT, complete with a real Zigbee network passed straight through from a USB stick plugged into the NAS itself. What that actually means day to day is you get the entire Home Assistant experience — apps, backups, hardware radios — without buying a single extra piece of kit, because the NAS you already own is doing the work.

If you already own a UGREEN NAS with spare capacity that runs U.G.O.S. Pro, this is genuinely one of the best ways to get started with Home Assistant properly, rather than half-committing to a container install that can’t do half of what this does. If you don’t have a UGREEN NAS already, go buy one and buy specifically the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT. It’s a beast of a machine. If you want this fantastic setup as well, you can buy the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT for around €560 without storage discs. Be aware that you’re not only buying a Home Assistant server but also a full-fledged NAS with many options for your Home Lab. It supports up to 144 Terrabytes, 2 SSD drives, and up to 64 GB of internal memory. I upgraded my NAS with 32GB of memory, so I can run quite some VMs on this machine! You can also use this NAS without Home Assistant, of course. It supports Virtual Machines and is great for storing your images and personal data. I’d say this is a no-brainer! The link to where to buy this NAS is in the description below

If you found this useful, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel — it really helps. And if you want to support the channel directly, there’s Patreon, Ko-fi, and channel memberships linked below.

Thanks again to UGREEN for supporting this video, and thank you to everyone backing the channel on Patreon and Ko-fi — I’ll see you in the next one.

Bye Bye!

🛒 Buy the UGREEN NAS DXP4800 GT here:

👉 UGREEN EU Official Website
NAS product collection page: https://nas.eu.ugreen.com/o8J9gS
UGREEN DXP4800 GT direct link: https://nas.eu.ugreen.com/iCGmlG
Valid period: Jul 20, 2026 – Aug 10, 2026
Discount rate: 20% off
Exclusive discount code: SHJ4800GT20

👉 UGREEN Amazon US
NAS product collection page: https://amzn.to/45cOGHK
UGREEN DXP4800 GT direct link: https://amzn.to/4yvrCS7
Valid period: Jul 20, 2026 – Aug 10, 2026
Discount rate: 20% off
Exclusive discount code: DXP4800GTSM

👉 UGREEN Amazon NL: https://amzn.to/4ftudDz
👉 UGREEN Amazon DE: https://amzn.to/4fiK9It
👉 UGREEN Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/4wiv1Cs