1. We don't currently have anything for that besides looking at the database directly.
2. We offer VM images if you want to keep flexibility but also benefit from all our work on an integrated system. You can also do a Supervised installation, but then it's your own responsibility to keep the host OS running the requirements of HA.
I’m a HA Container user and I can vouch for this path. It gives me the ability to run whatever other stuff I want to alongside HA in Docker containers with minimal effort.
Works really well, updating is low effort (but not automatic) but you could probably set something up if you wanted to pretty easily.
I'm also a container user and for the most part it works great, but there are downsides where you can't use certain functionality that's only currently exposed on HAOS (like the new SkyConnect stuff... they said it's coming for container users but I think any feature like that is going to take a little longer).
I do this as well and leverage Watchtower [0] to upgrade the container for me and keep the image cache flushed. I just track the `stable` tag and make sure to keep an eye on changes. I only check for updates once a week and it has worked out great.
2. We offer VM images if you want to keep flexibility but also benefit from all our work on an integrated system. You can also do a Supervised installation, but then it's your own responsibility to keep the host OS running the requirements of HA.