Anecdotal: I like like my OG UDM. Bought it the year it came out. No issues in almost 7 years.
Unifi is one of those brands where this phrase applies: "when it works, it works really good."
People will see those comments, buy the hardware, and some of them will have bad experiences. You will hear about those bad experiences way more often than someone who hasn't had any issues with the same hardware in the same timeframe.
That's how it is with pretty much every consumer-focused network equipment brand.
Proxmox isn't really comparable to Docker (or its 3rd party webui frontends) and was never meant to directly run user-facing services. Proxmox simply provides the virtual infrastructure required to host VMs and LXCs that will run your desired services.
IMO, Dockge (not a typo) is a far cleaner and easier solution than Portainer. Its very simple to set up and can easily link to other Dockge instances on other Docker hosts (I have like 4 or 5 VMs just for Docker). It also doesn't bury your compose files deep inside a specific Docker volume that only allows its own container to access...like Portainer does.
I use Syncthing to sync my database between my laptops, desktop, work computer, personal phone, work phone, and my NAS (which gets everything and is set to never delete anything). NAS is backed up weekly, and the password database is also backed up to a few trusted cloud services.
I think you might be misunderstanding something here, because this is already how every ISP works - including the one you are using right now. Just on a bigger scale.
I'm honestly not entirely sure. I've been eyeballing Valetudo for a few years now, but the price of the supported robots was out of my budget until I happened onto the $20 Wyze from eBay. Took a chance and won big. I'm into it a whopping $65. And a bit of labor to swap the motherboard (mine refused to run ADB at all). But that's the fun part for me.
So, uh, exactly how "old" is that server? Because, if I understood it correctly, it should be based on 8th gen Intel, which makes this a solid piece of equipment in any homelab (provided you can deal with the noise and power draw).
Nice