Being a noob and all I was wondering whats the real benefit of having a monolithic lets say proxmox instance with router, DNS, VPN but also home asssistant and NAS functionalitiy all in one server? I always thought dedicated devices are simpler to maintain or replace and some services are also more critical than others I guess?
I started out with the monolith approach and really the benefit I saw is that it can be more compact, and possibly more power efficient while achieving the same thing.
I ultimately moved towards dedicated hardware for critical things like networking, DNS, and Jellyfin because those are the type of services that people will notice going down or rebooting. And a low powered swarm cluster for everything else. It’s much easier to tinker with the lab when your playground has devices that other people aren’t dependent on.
There’s no right answer though I think what’s important is to learn about what fits your needs as you go deeper into the hobby or the professional world if that’s your goal.