What you shouldn't do, is go bare metal (as in: install linux on some machine and start hosting). Begin with some virtualised solution like Proxmox or some Dock

What you shouldn't do, is go bare metal (as in: install linux on some machine and start hosting). Begin with some virtualised solution like Proxmox or some Docker-based platform. This way you can quickly bring up new machines with any OS, and quickly recover mistakes and failures. Yes, steeper learning curve, but anything else will make you miserable as problems would cause long recovery phases.