The performance target of "linux desktop running lxd" and the price tag "not crazy expensive" is not very clear...
I would personally look for a fanless barebone pc and equip it with as much RAM and storage as you like. One example for this could be the Zotac ZBOX CI629, which you can get for around 400 Euros and has a 13th gen Intel i3 built in.
Is this within your budget?
Not OP, but generally, you want to separate internal and external services as much as possible. Some even suggest running external services on a cloud server and internal servers on your LAN.
If you run internal and external services on the same host, you need to be careful to not make any configuration mistakes. Take extra time to also test what should NOT be possible.
We had it at work, but I never did anything else than receiving and resolving alerts. But it looked good for me and I liked the system.
While I really like uptime kuma, it seems a bit too restricted for OPs use case. For example, to monitor disk or CPU usage, you would need to write your own scripts. It would be doable, but not very nice.
At least how I understood the.question, OP would probably look for something like icinga.
With 4 TB, the price difference is quite painful (at least for me). With anything below, I'd buy an SSD without thinking twice.
My guess is that it is often hard for people to grasp that HDDs loose value much faster than other items they own. New HDDs are larger and offer better price per TB, and older HDDs have a higher risk to fail.
I can buy new HDDs at 16€/TB, why should I spend 12€/TB on a used disk?
I have no idea why, but I made the same experience. Used drives are in most cases much overprized. Often far beyond the price/TB of new, larger disks.
Awesome :D But providing a speed test on a 10 Mbit line is IMO pretty pointless.
umbrelOS is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 license.
I've never heard of this one.
It also seems to run well on the Steam Deck, similar to the first Horizon game. But I have not tried it myself.
Even a raspberry pi can run linux with an lxd desktop, and this i3 is a few times faster than a raspberry pi. But it depends on what you want to with it...