Thanks for this - the one advantage I’m noticing is that to update the services I’m running, I have to rebuild the container. I can’t really just update from the UI if an update is available. I can do it, it is just somewhat of a nuisance.

How often are there issues with dependencies? Is that a problem with a lot of software these days?

I don’t know anything about F2FS. I was surprised to see it do so well.

I imagine for home lab stuff, filesystems usually won’t be the bottleneck? Is there any case where a home user might benefit from a faster filesystem?

For me, pros are:

• Fun to learn something new
• Easy to test different systems. For example, I can play with different router or NAS software without having a separate computer around.
• I’ve been able to create different “computers” that serve different needs and require different levels of security.
• Currently, a cluster is probably overkill, it was a fun experiment.

Cons

• Updating all the different systems can be a pain. I could probably automate it, but I haven’t made the time to learn it yet.
• As a beginner, I’m throwing a bunch of parts together and hoping it will work. I should probably be more strategic in my implementation, but I don’t know what to prioritize. I’m sure I’ll have to start over in the future.
• With the previous point, the storage setup doesn’t seem very intuitive. I probably need to set up that better.
• I haven’t quite figured out backups yet. My VM backups all seem too big. I need to figure that out and automate it.

Hope this is helpful.