How did you get the certs? Was it though a DNS challenge or web server on port 80?

It is not really a proper language. It is designed to run to generate HTML dynamically but uses outside of that are pushing it. It is also problematic that Nextcloud mixes code and data. It is also slower than compiled languages like C, Go or Rust.

I think Go is really good for web applications with lots of server back end code since it is fast and static while being memory safe and easy to read. The Go syntax is cleaner than PHP and less hard to maintain.

Docker is way more simple to setup and run. You can use a docker-compose file instead of trying to install something locally by hand.

I’m not the biggest fan of Nextcloud but there currently isn’t a lot of good alternatives that have the same features and polish.

The issue with Nextcloud is the PHP junk it comes with. Writing something in Go is much better and it is silly to me that Nextcloud puts code in docker volumes. If they could separate out the code and data they would be in a much better position.

I would set aside a dedicated device that acts as a sort of “provisioner” and admin node. It can be something like a raspberry pi or desktop computer.

From a backup perspective I would evacuate risk vs cost/effort. If you lost your home would it really matter that you lost some config files?

You want something outside of IPtables like Firewalld. Ansible should only run to make changes to a existing system.

I’m not taking this to lemmyml

Don’t?

Self hosting makes no sense for this

What are you using swap for? On Fedora installs the swap is just zram. I think that most of usefulness of swap has passed now that we have systems with noodles of ram.

The worst case without swap is that oom gets triggered. If 16GB gets eaten up chances are it is a single app anyway. Unless you are doing something you know is memory heavy it shouldn’t be a problem. Also memory is cheap and you can probably upgrade if needed.

Better question: Have you looked into infrastructure as code? (IaaC) you can define everything in a Git repo and then create everything in a repeatable way.

I would turn swap off honestly. Chances are you aren’t going to have issues with 16GB.

Changing the port is a total waste of time

Changing the port is just like putting a picture of a window on your door. Harden SSH properly and don’t waste time with security via obscurity

Use key based auth only and then run ssh-audit.

It isn’t to crazy to install

I wouldn’t trust his guides personally. He has some hot takes and more importantly he isn’t someone who really knows the Homelab/self hosting landscape.

If you are looking for guides I would find channels that have done series on whatever you are interested in there is plenty of quality material.

To start off here is what I would do.

First, get a wireless router that is capable of running OpenWRT and then get a switch to accompany it.

Next go to eBay and buy 3 used workstations. They don’t need to be fancy and you can always upgrade them later. You need 3 for later.

Next find some storage. You can find decent Sata SSDs for pretty cheap. If you are looking to store something bigger like a movie collection also pickup some larger drives. With the extra drives make sure you buy a sata or SAS pcie card. This is because you need a dedicated controller to passthough to a VM.

Once you have all that you can start installing Proxmox. You probably want a raid 1 configuration so that you can replace a disk without downtime. The reason I say three devices is because you need 3 machines to get consensus in the cluster. When consensus is lost affected devices go into what is called fencing which is where it freezes all VMs and operations to prevent split brain from happening.

Technically this is probably a bit overkill but I like having a solid base for experimentation and flexibility. Doing it right from the get go will mean that you have more power down the road.

For actually hosting stuff I would use docker compose inside a VM.