I agree with this viewpoint. IMO, a lot of these types of threads fill up fast with gimmicky things that sound good at first but do nothing to increase security

I agree with this viewpoint. IMO, a lot of these types of threads fill up fast with gimmicky things that sound good at first but do nothing to increase security against realistic threats, plus are at least inconvenient to set up and maintain, if not prone to misfiring and blocking you. The real advice for setting up new servers IMO is, SSH pubkey auth is perfectly adequate security. Set it up normally on the default port logging in as root, disable password login, and don't worry about the noisy failed bot logins. This is a lot more convenient for automated setup and maintenance and has no practical loss of security.