Been using it 18 months. Have drawn out $20 so far. Be another 6 months till I get another $20 which is the minimum withdrawal. Network has been solid and nothing dodgy showing up in the firewall or on my DNS. It’s not amazing, but it’s free money

Current Self-hosted Setup

Hardware

Server 1
Trycoo / Peladn mini pc
Intel n97 CPU
Integrated GPU
32gb of 3200mt/s ddr4 (Upgraded from 16gb)
512nvme
2x 2tb ssd's (Raid1 + LVM)
Startech usb to sata cable
Atolla 6 port powered usb 3.0 splitter 
2x 8tb hdd's
2 bay usb 3.0 Fideco dock
Each 8tb HDD is split into 2 equal size partitions, making 4 x 4tb partitions
Each night, the 2tb SSD array backups to the alternating first partition of the HDD's .
Each 1st of the month, the 2tb SSD array backups to the alternating 2nd partition of the HDD's .

Server 2
Raspberry pi 4b
32gb SD card
4gb ram

Services

Server 1
Nginx web server / reverse proxy.  
Fail2ban.  
Crowdsec.  
Valutwarden
Bit warden reimplantation for storing credentials 
Forgejo
Remote federated git
Immich.   
Google Photos replacement.  
External libraries only.  
4 users.  
Radicale
Calender and contacts
Navidrome.  
Spotify replacement.  
2 users.  
Adguard home
1st instance
Provides Network wide DNS filtering and DHCP server
Unbound
Provides recursive DNS
Go-notes
Rich Text formatting, live, real time multi-user notes app
FMD
Find my device
Transmission
Torrent client
PIA VPN
Network Namespace script to isolate PIA & Transmission
Searxng
Meta search engine
StirlingPDF 
PDF editor
File browser
This is in maintenance mode only so I am planning to migrate to File Browser Quantum soon
Syncthing 
Syncs 3 android and 1 apple phone for immich
Custom rsync backup script
Darkstat
Real time Network statistics

Server 2
Fail2ban
Crowdsec
Honeygain
Generates a tiny passive income
I'm UK based and in the last 6 months it has produced £15
Adguard home
2nd instance
Provides Network wide DNS filtering and DHCP server
Unbound
Provides recursive DNS
Custom DDNS update script

I love podman quadlets, I didn’t do anything and it updated itself 😁

Mine just runs over my music directory on a cron and tags what it wants. I don’t pay any attention to it. I haven’t come across a mis tagged track yet. Maybe I will at some point?

There isn’t one. Build incrementally, and adapt and modify as it grows. Starting out, you have no idea where you will eventually end up. It’s a journey and a learning experience bespoke to you. Start with a basic dedicated device as a server that’s cheap. Add a service and get it safe and secure. Once you are happy with it and it is reliable and solid, add another service… Rinse and repeat.

Honestly, filebrowser or filebrowser quantum are what you need. Essentially a web UI frontend for sftp / sshfs. Really simple light weight.

From my perspective, self hosting is a hobby, we run services we feel we need, but it’s also something we do for fun. As such some people enjoy thinking about and deploying the most secure server possible, regardless of actual threats. However, to directly answer your question, yes there isn’t really a lot that can be stolen from a self host residential server, maybe if you hack a valutwarden instance and acquire all the credit card details stored in it and all the id’s stored in it. But the main hack isnt stealing, but deploying a bot net of some sort.

Can’t comment on ente. I looked at it originally along with many others and initially chose photo prism. Ran that for around 6 months then switched to immich. Have no plans on changing any time soon. I host 4 users on it. It works great, been using it over 12 months so been on it from v1, and been through all the changes to V2 and V3 and never had a breaking change. Have auto updates in in podman for it so I never manually touch it. It just works.

I switched from photo prism after 12 months on it, to immich. Much prefer it and offers more and better features from my perspective.

I don’t touch or maintain anything, my setup is completely automated.

I run navidrome as my music server. I use transmission, through a namespace with a VPN attached and port forwarded, all managed through systemd and I just turn it on and off as needed. I dump all music in any condition in my music folder and torrent dump music there once completed. Beets manages and fixes my music folder meta tags automatically.