It all boils down to what you want to use it with. 16GB is plenty for what you are describing right now, plus more in the future if you keep your installation tidy.
Would I limit myself with a max 16gb system? Probably not, unless I was certain my usage for that device is fixed or another external factor (e.g., I got a huge deal on that device)
Also keep in mind that N95/N100 are more power efficient than a Ryzen.
I’m not sure I understand the multiple web servers issue. If you forward your wan port to a web server in your network, only that one web server will be exposed. Unless you are mistakenly forwarding the other ports (eg 1234) as well?
In any case the way to go is reverse proxy. Mine have both subdomains and subpath, and they work perfectly together
Fastmail and nextdns. I’m still paying for iCloud, but I intend to move everything to my local server.
I go on and off streaming services: Disney, Hulu, Netflix, HBO.
Amazon Prime, which includes a bunch of goodies.
Kindle Unlimited. I usually wait for promotions since there isn’t a ton of material I like that I haven’t read yet. Also I’m rather busy lately.
Any recent PC will do. Naturally, if you plan on playing games on it (moonlight and sunshine) you should size appropriately, and I’d recommend not to mix your NAS with a gaming PC since games and accessory can crash your server.
Without gaming, any 8th generation Intel or newer with iGPU should handle most transcoding needs. It’s more than capable of handling all the services you mentioned (again, not considering gaming)
I’d look into mobile class cpu so it’s lighter on energy consumption.
Twilio charges less than a cent for each message. A hundred messages is 79c. I’d be surprised to find any other solution that is dramatically cheaper. On AWS it would be 58c.
Those prices are in US, but I would be surprised if those services weren’t competitive in other markets.
No mention on orgmode?
There’s nothing really private about your ip. Whatever you need to do to secure your network you have to do in any solution for this problem.
If you had monitoring, you wouldn’t have taken 6 hours to catch it.
I’d say learn HA anyway because it’s a good skill, but that doesn’t prevent you from having the other parts I mentioned. I say this because, again, unless you are experienced with HA, there will be edge cases where it’s not going to do what you though it would do, and your service will be down all the same. Monitoring/alerting and one-click/shell script install will be much more valuable in the short-mid term.
For me the main selling point of docker is spinning up a stable version of a container and it pulls all its dependencies which are also working. Installing things directly on the OS, at least for me, is a war of “run service; lib XX not found; apt install XX; run service; can’t write to /foo/bar;” etc etc
In your case, I’d have a docker compose with all my services, and would just say docker compose up and pronto.
HA involves many factors: service uptime, link uptime, db uptime, etc. I’d probably put a reverse proxy in front and use the servers as upstream. web servers tend to be more reliable, so in your case a single instance ought to suffice.
Aside from actual HA tools, your most important asset in this stage is a uptime check service that pings your server every n seconds, a reliable backup/restore procedure, and a one-button deployment strategy.
Shits can and will probably happen. What are you going to do when it does? And how fast can you respond? I say this because you most likely won’t get HA right in the first, second, or third time, unless you already have tons of experience behind you. Embrace failure and plan accordingly.
Your main dividing factor in this regard is if you want to do transcoding or not. If so, you need to pick a CPU with good iGPU, and for Intel that starts on the 8th gen. Older gens work well for 1080p, but for 4k they aren’t great. I have a i5-7500 that couldn’t do 4k HEVC without lag (although I was using it as HTPC. Maybe headless would be enough?)
For anything else, mostly any computer will do. Most of the stuff you host will be idle most of the time, so your CPU only needs to be powerful enough for the apps you are using at the moment.
If you have the skills, jellyfin!