This is a fantastic article! I completely agree with the author's philosophy. Simple automation can reduce maintenance to nearly zero, and it's incredible how much can be achieved with just a few well-crafted scripts.

I use a nearly identical alias for docker pull to keep my containers updated. To ensure everything stays running smoothly, I've built a lightweight watchdog (a mix of bash scripting and Uptime Kuma/Beszel) that monitors my services and containers and restarts them if they crash. This way, I rarely need to intervene manually.

For critical services (DNS, VPN, git, web search, crawler and mail, etc.), I add an extra layer of redundancy by running them on multiple servers across different locations. If one server fails, the others seamlessly take over. I also use DNS round-robin as a simple but effective way to handle load balancing and failover; no HaProxy, K8, expensive IP Takeover (ARP Spoofing) or BGP Anycast and VRRP/CARP, Proxmox or fancy orchestration tools required. If a node goes down, another watchdog script temporarily removes it from DNS, and traffic shifts to the remaining servers. Most often the services are self-healing. The best part? My deployment and monitoring are fully self-scripted (no Terraform, Ansible or BundleWrap). Moving services to a new server is as easy as running some scripts over SSH. Everything sets itself up automatically. Currently I run my services on 2 Pi's, 2 stratum 1 servers (from centerclick), and 8 VPSs that cost me around $40/month. It's a great example of how a little automation and redundancy can go a long way in keeping things cheap and reliable without unnecessary complexity.

I invest around 1-2h/month to maintain and (mainly) adjust my setup. Before I head multiple Proxmox instances and a backup server that cost me around $250/month, I was spending 1-2h/week just to keep everything running. The difference is night and day.

However, I've personally had bad experiences with consumer hardware like the Raspberry Pi and hardware failures. Most of the time, I didn't feel motivated to replace the hardware and set up all the services again (even if I had a backup). As an Unify alternative i can recommand GL-iNET; build modern hardware for OpenWRT with some additions and the hardware has enough power to run Wifi7, AdGuard and Tailscale or ZeroTier. (Before I run Protectli Vaults with a virtual PfSense, Tailscale and AdGuard on Proxmox and extra OpenWRT access points) I can recommand the Protectli Hardware over a Raspberry Pi, especially if you want to run a single server/hardware homelab.

Thanks for the inspiration; it's always refreshing to see others embracing simplicity!