Just about anything is OK for a server, I use whatever hardware I get from work thats being decommissioned.

The biggest limit I see is the ram. Depending on what you spin up and how, it’ll be the tightest budget per service.

Then tag with [CBH] as required.

No, but maybe its an experience thing - have to be burned enough times by not having something to want to have something?

I think a lot of projects start off just someone goofing around with an idea so no hard requirements to start. I do that when I’m learning something new but they aren’t ambitious or worth sharing.

I always start with defining requirements, and then I follow with a bunch of pseudo code. Its how I do things at work too. I like getting the ideas and structure out before I write any actual code or I get stupidly distracted.

Proxmox is a server OS based on Debian which is oriented on running virtual machines and Linux containers.

The physical server runs proxmox. The services can all be individual containers (LXC’s).

Adding to the number of servers (and migrating containers later) is a benefit of Proxmox, since you can buy another PC to be a server later, and easily expand as you go.

Proxmox.

Each service becomes an LXC. Docker containers can be migrated to LXC, or be contained within an LXC dedicated to docker.

Running out of processing power? Add another server, add to a cluster, and migrate services (LXC or VM) over.

Having run Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, slack, even Oracle Linux - Proxmox is what I run for myself (and some clients).