I 2nd this.

Be aware hosting media thru their proxy is breaking their ToS. Not saying anything will happen, but be mindful.

Clonezilla. Done it too many times.

Not sure what beforehand means, but I get in the shower, sit for 20 mins and think, then stand up, get wet, add bar of soap to wash rag, put wash rag all over my body, rinse, then get out and dry.

I run as much as I can baremetal on Debian. If I can't do baremetal I use podman on Debian.

Oh ok. That's awesome. I didn't know it could do UDP/TCP proxying. That's awesome.

I'm not sure if you can proxy smb as it's not http/s data. If using NGiNX you could use something like the stream config, but there's not really an advantage.

I remember I spent ~$330 on 8TB HDDs and now you can get 20 TB for around the same price.

Is connect open source?

I run ejabberd for myself and my family/friend and use conversations on android. Mattermost I would say is the most like discord. I run one of those as well and love it.

I use NGiNX and have ever since I started. It just works and is easy to configure.