.eu and your local tld are often quite a bit cheaper too!

Wireguard (which is what tailscale is built on) doesn’t even require you to open ports on both sides.

Set up wireguard on a vps first, where it is accessible, then set it up from within your network. It’ll traverse NAT and everything, and you don’t have to open a port on your network.

Tailscale is the exact same thing, just easier because it does everything for you (key generation, routing, …). Their service replaces your vps, up to you if you think that’s acceptable or not. IMHO, wireguard is worth learning at least. I eventually (partially) switched to tailscale because I’m lazy, and all services I host have authentication anyway, with vpn just being a second layer.

Kubernetes yes, but minikube is kinda meh as a way to install it outside of development environments.

There’s so many better manageable ways like RKE/Rancher (which gives you the possibility to go k3s),Kubespray or even kubeadm.

All of those will result in a cluster that’s more suitable for running actual workloads.

I don’t think programming language is a good metric for security. I assume everything I host has issues, and then try to mitigate from there.

IMHO, a better approach is to vet the project beforehand, looking at whether it is still actively maintained. I usually use things like commits, issues, etc to try and gauge whether a piece of software is actively maintained so that when an issue arises, it can be fixed.

You can mitigate much of the risk by using some basic best practices, like isolating all apps from each other (using docker, for example), using a reverse proxy, tools like fail2ban or a web application firewall, using proper database permissions for each app, etc

What I also do is add another layer by making certain applications accessible only over vpn. That won’t work for some tools, obviously, but also reduces the risk for tools you are only using yourself.

I’ve set up several Kubernetes clusters in a professional setting (and work with it daily), but I still use straight docker for running my own stuff.

Using tools like Rancher it’s pretty much no effort to set it up, but the overhead is just not worth it if you’re not using the orchestration IMO.