can recommend Nextcloud, we have used it as we cant move PID outside of the UK. Also there is a Nextcloud all in one setup that will get you a fully working Files/Office/whiteboard suite
I do this too, with Pi Hole as well.
I once got smoked trout as a Christmas bonus, the year before that a 250g bag of coffee.
Now I work for a company that looks after it's employees, we had pizza like 3 times just before Christmas. One order was for about 50 pizzas for about 80 staff
Me a user: hello, heres some money Me the admin: hi, thanks 👍
Thats amazing, I would take her to bed for that
I leave my servers running 24/7, thats the point of a server. Also my home automation would be a little pointless if its off.
I did have a UPS, but it died and I have got round to replacing it.
Its all horses for courses, if your homelab is a playground to test things out then turning it off when not is use is fine. But some have live services that you may want at a moments notice and there for having it up all the time is better.
Linux has been ready for ARM for a long time, Android is linux and have been running for a long time. Also see the Raspberry Pi and PiOS, based on Debian.
I run a Pi and there are boat loads of things ARM ready
me remembering I caused an outage yesterday by deleting nginx config 🤦♂️
I think your missing the point of HAOS, it's an appliance. You don't manage it like a normal self host system.
Once you treat it as an appliance, it's great. Also there is a portainer agent you can run that will connect to a portainer instance.
As for your tunnel issues, maybe the tunnel thing is your biggest issue. I run all my self host stuff on its own subdomain, if I want to route something home I use the site to site VPN I have. Even a cheap ovh vps could be a way to run stuff on subdomains
that looks to be almost all steaming services adding an ad-supported option, you now pay to not have ads.
Back to the high sea's to watch anything then
I would say that for just file sync nextcloud is over kill, but I have invested a lot of time into getting my nextcloud install rock solid. Upgrades are painless and am about to move it to a new host.
So use it for file sync, including backups from things. Calendar & contact sync, RSS reader, kanboard, photo sync and more.