> when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it up in the first place Why should you need to remember it? Like you wrote later on, yo

> when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it up in the first place Why should you need to remember it? Like you wrote later on, you just " document everything you do", as you do it. That's better than any sort of script or version control, since you can describe it how you like, which means quite succinctly. And it's not too difficult to adopt the mindframe of "What would I have needed to know 10 minutes ago to understand what to do". > Docker has helped tremendously, since you can essentially use an out-of-the-box Linux distro with docker installed, and you don't really have to install anything else on the hardware This actually illustrates, IMHO, how containers and docker are overused. You're talking about a single machine with a single purpose/set-of-purposes, and no occasional switching of configurations. So - why containerize? Whatever you have on Docker, just have that on your actual system. > my advice is to keep the number of customizations to a bare minimum Sound advice based on my own (limited) experience with self-hosted home-servers. > and just as importantly, back up every single configuration file. Fine, but don't rely on this too much. It's always a pain, if at all possible, to restore stuff based on the config files. Usually easier to follow your self-instructions for configuration.