If you do make a switch to Proxmox, then Proxmox Backup Server is where it’s at for backups. Its de-duplication feature is incredible. I backup all my Proxmox VMs/LXCs with it, as well as my non-Proxmox hosts (laptop, etc.), with proxmox-backup-client.

Personally, I’m using a few of those tiny Beelink PCs (a couple Mini S12 and an EQ12) with the N100 processor, as well as a couple larger rackmount PCs I built for situations where I needed to add an HBA or some other PCI-Ex device. I do recommend something like a Beelink before building, though - they run Proxmox fine, they’re inexpensive, efficient, quiet, and each one can run a handful of VMs.

I use cron schedules to run scripts that backup my important stuff to s dedicated backup drive, then copies the backups to a different external drive, then upload the backups to a dedicated backup cloud storage account. Then it deletes any backups older than a month.

Have a look at Backrest for Restic. It works great with pre/post scripting and supports healthchecks for monitoring status and stats.

Also is a nice easy to use WebUI which is great for servers.

Hey! Another nixos user 😁 What are you using for your VPS? nixos-infect? nixos-everywhere?

As for mini PCs, a friend bought one from Minis Forum and quite likes it. But if you want to support the opensource ecosystem, there are tuxedo computers and slimbook. There’s also starlabs byte.

Take your pick :)

Anti Commercial-AI license

Proxmox runs Qemu under the hood. It’s the current favorite for VM management.

I wouldn’t bother with k8s unless you’re deploying services in high availability, or groups of related containers.

I’ve used a RV/Marine deep cycle battery attached to a UPS before, that would certainly give you enough for 2-3 hours on most setups.

proxmox

You will enjoy Proxmox. When you get it all jammy, check out the Proxmox Helper Scripts: https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/

K8S is a whole different approach and I find it to be a lot more complex, but you would not need virtual machines. If all your applications are running in containers anyways, you could consider it. Finding a good solution for persistent storage is probably the most important design decision.

Thinking about getting some or most of this over to a service like hetzner, perhaps even splurging on a baremetal dedicated system.

If I may, I find LUXVPS to be quite capable and responsive hosts.

Black Luxury Deal #1

   4 vCores (Xeon Gold 6150)
    26 GB DDR4 RAM
    150 GB Raid 1 NVMe
    1 Gbit internet speed | 40 TB Traffic
    1x IPv4
    1x /64 IPv6
    3.2Tbit Premium DDoS Protection
    24/7 Ticket Support
    4 Backups
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I’ve never used Hetzner, and I don’t know what you are hosting, but I’m sold on LuxVPS. I also use Contabo, and Ethernet Services. The latter would indeed be bare-bare-metal as there are no frills. However, for a test server and for $35 a year, it works.

I love Tailscale.

The more you learn with the command line the more interesting stuff you can do.

Most of the stuff will somewhat work, but you’ll introduce side effects sooner or later by using commands that might work but are not the proper ones and alter unrelated things. At some point those will likely bite you and you have no idea where it’s coming from. I’d suggest to check at least what the commands you are copying are doing.

What you can probably do to build some knowledge if you’re going to be using AI anyway is asking it to explain some of the concepts to you. You also have the ability to ask clarifying questions about anything you don’t understand.

I’d encourage learning. The more you understand the better you can control your data and maintain your services. You don’t need to be an expert but I’d encourage working towards relying less on gpt.

I’ve had some amusing mixed experience with ChatGPT for this. When I asked about iptables rules to restrict podman, it was great. About podaman quadlets, though, which I first misspelled ‘quartlets’, it completely made it up, and even sent me a fake link to nonexistent documentation when I challenged it!

• it’s more helpful if you ask the right questions
• and its answers often give you ideas of what to google
• Old stuff that has been written about many times over is more likely to get a proper answer
• sometimes the gist of a wrong command/answer could still help me understand what to do with the right one

Try to understand whatever you use from AI. At least understanding the general picture of what it means, and a basic idea of “this flag is for this; this option is for that”. AI can also help you with that understanding, but again beware of it completely making up something logically coherent but wrong.

Does it have QuickSync support? If it does it might be able to handle a few 4k transcodes.

Alternatively I wonder why the video is needing to be transcoded in the first place, maybe you can get it playing natively.

What do you actually need to run on your server? I’d look into downsizing. A single small form factor computer or even a newer Raspi can do a lot these days.

Myself right now I’d probably take it with me - in fact that’s that I’m planning to do in a couple of months - but it sounds like my needs are a bit less than yours, and i can do some stuff just over LAN and on the ‘server’ (which is also a laptop) itself.

For more, I think I’d also ask a friend like you’re thinking.

I did that before with a relative - just had to ask them to restart the server every now and again!

About trusted encryption keys, I did it with a simple password for boot encryption, that my relative knew, so in the event of theft it’d still be hard for thieves to get anything; but after boot I’d ssh in and unlock the second disk with my own password, then start up the services.

Oh that’s dope. How many hours are you running? Do you also use them for things like encoding or something like that?

You can restrict Caddy access to use your tailscale. For instance in your Caddyfile:

For tailscale ip range:

myverycoolserver.duckdns.org {
    @allowed {
        remote_ip 100.64.0.0/10  # Allow Tailscale IP range
    }
    respond @allowed 200  # Allow access
    respond 403  # Deny access for others
    reverse_proxy localhost:YOUR_SERVICE_PORT  # Your service configuration
}

For specific tailscale IP:

myverycoolserver.duckdns.org {
    @allowed {
        remote_ip YOUR_TAILSCALE_IP  # Replace with the specific Tailscale IP
    }
    respond @allowed 200  # Allow access
    respond 403  # Deny access for others
    reverse_proxy localhost:YOUR_SERVICE_PORT  # Your service configuration
}

Might look into the pangolin project if what you’re trying to do is expose services from your home network over wireguard to a reverse proxy on a vps.
The software suite is basically wireguard, traefik, and auth middleware wrapped in a trenchcoat. Much simpler than rolling your own implementation, but there has been recent controversy with the project over locking “basic” existing features behind a paywall after the project got popular, though after public backlash they’ve backpedaled on that iirc.

Edit: Just realized you said tailscale. Above recommendation might be a deal breaker depending on your reason for wanting tailscale specifically

You’re gonna need to provide more detail on what you’re trying to do

It should be the same setup regardless if you’re using a VPN or not.

Having used both I generally prefer traefik.