Almost 10 years ago I purchased a Synology NAS for local storage and backups. I was really happy with the ease of use and their support is top notch. I got it set up and didn’t think much about it. Fast forward and a deal on a used server comes around and all the sudden I have a lot to learn. Proxmox, TrueNas, Nginx Proxy Manager… a whole new world I had somehow never even thought about. The concept of virtual machines blew my mind. Spin up a machine, mess it up, tear it down, repeat. Kids wanted to host a Minecraft server. No problem, pterodactyl. But wait, pterodactyl wants to be installed in a machine that doesn’t have any other software installed. No problem, I got one of those! This is magic and I’m loving it. I mostly lurk around here but thanks to everyone who posts because this place is a great source of knowledge and sarcasm and I appreciate both!
I’ve been at this for over a decade and there’s always more to learn! If you haven’t checked out docker-compose yet, that’s your next step. It allows you to script container setups :) I have 5 compose files based on categories (pirating, media servers, admin, etc…) and a shell script to launch them if I want to install them all, otherwise I just call the specific compose file. I can have all my apps up and running on a new server in about 10 minutes. Docker is awesome when it works well.