I used proxmox and have played a little with nix and guix, but simplest is just use debian, put /home on a separate logical partition from the system partition so you can reinstall the system without clobbering user files, and as people keep saying, backup early and often.
If you look at the petapixel article, they complain about the speed (10mb/sec not 100) and have serious doubts about the reliability. Using this for backup or for security cameras sounds like a bad idea. It could still be good for some things like carrying your movie library on your phone, while still having a stable copy at home.
This seems to be different and is geared towards directly looking after other humans. Hactivism as I’m used to the term, can often be technocratic.
Simplest is use /etc/hosts to set up names, if there are just a few.
Did you just discover this? It’s a Microsoft site after all.
$11/m is a lot. If you just want a small site on shared hosting, try namecrane.com. For storage use Hetzner Storage Box.