cron

This reminds me of how Google handled the stadia shutdown. Now many controllers have got a second life thanks to the option to enable bluetooth.

I think the file server analogy isn't really fair. Nextcloud is better compared to Microsoft 365 or Google GSuite.

All of these offer file storage, but also much more.

Maybe call your provider and ask them? Sometimes they hide settings in the user UI but can easily disable DHCP for you.

Another option that is sometimes offered by the provider is another, more capable router model. This might cost a little more.

What benefit do you hope to get?

Streaming 4k content is not a problem, transcoding on the fly to lower resolutions is hard and requires good capacity planning.

I'm not convinced that a pile of old HDDs is a good fit for your homeserver.

• Many small disks will consume more energy than fewer large disks. Currently, the best capacity per price seems to be in the 20TB segment. A similar argument can be made for noise.
• The HDDs you have might not be perfect for 20/7 usage. I personally would recommend using disks that are made for continuous usage.

Start with what you have, but if you outgrow your setup, buy proper hardware. And make backups.

No, but thats what TLS does absolutely fine.

Remotely hacking into my server is probably harder than just walking into my home with a warrant and confiscate everything.

I'm unsure about the end-to-end encryption aspect. While this feature is great for a cloud service like ente.io, it doesn't really help much in a selfhosted scenario - and might make backups more complicated. Any other opinions on this?

While this argument is valid for a larger domain, it doesn't really matter for the small selfhoster.

This is true and typically called "Next Generation Firewall" or "Intrusion Prevention System".

However, these have three disadvantages:

• They rely on signatures and many vendors only provide these with an active, costly subscription
• They add complexity and possible error sources and false positives.
• They require processing power and can easily reduce throughput by 90%.

These systems are quite common in enterprise scenarios, but AFAIK the exception in home labs and selfhosting environments.

Something like Guacamole could be a nice fit. Additionally, you need a virtual PC to connect to, Guacamole is just the proxy.