The most useful philosophy I've come across is "make the OS instance disposable." That means an almost backups-first approach. Everything of importance to me is thoroughly backed up so once main box goes kaput, I just have to pull the most recent copy of the dataset and provision it on a new OS, maybe new hardware if needed. These days, it's not that difficult. Docker makes scripting backups easy as pie. You write your docker-compose so all config and program state lives in a single directory. Back up the directory, and all you need to get up and running again with your services is access to Docker Hub to fetch the application code.

Some downsides with this approach (Docker's security model sorta assumes you can secure/segment your home network better than most people are actually able to), but honestly, for throwing up a small local service quickly it's kind of fantastic. Also, if you decide to move away from Docker the experience will give you insight into what amounts to program state for the applications you use which will make doing the same thing without Docker that much easier.