To provision VMs yes, to configure them I think Ansible works best. But you can call Ansible from Terraform.

You can use udev rules and systemd mount or AutoFs.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Udev
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd#systemd.mount_-_mounting

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Autofs

It was definitely a headache for me as well, but you need a guest agent (like vmwaretools or qemu-guest-agent), a cloud init ready template for the distro of your choice, a cloud init config file (network/user/vendor) and a custom SCSI/ide cloudinit cdrom mounted at boot on your VM. You also can find cloudinit logs on your VM to try and figure out what’s missing or what went wrong.

If you buy three of them you can set up a Ceph cluster I suppose ahah. That would solve part of your issue of having storage and compute on the same node.

If you don’t need enterprise level hardware and support, I can suggest MinisForum. They released the MS01 fairly recently and I believe it fits your specs.

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01

That’s the problem, if anyone somehow gets your root CA key, your encryption is pretty much gone and they can sign whatever they want with your CA.
It’s a lot of work to make sure it’s safe in a home setup.

I’m talking about home hosting and private keys. Not businesses with people whose full time job is to make sure everything runs fine.
I’m a nobody and I regularly have people/bots testing my router. I’m not monitoring my whole setup yet and if someone gets in I would probably not notice until it’s too late.
So hosting my own CA is a hassle and a security risk I’m not willing to put work into.

The domain certificate is public and its key is private? That’s basically it, if anyone gets access to your key, they can sign with your name and generate certificates without your knowledge. That’s my opinion and the main reason why I wouldn’t have a self hosted CA, maybe I’m wrong or misled, but it’s a lot of work to ensure everything is safe, only for a self hosted setup.

For self hosting at least, having your own CA is a pain in the ass to make sure everything is safe and that nobody except you has access to your CA root key.
I’m not saying it’s not doable, but it’s definitely a lot of work and potentially a big security risk if you’re not 100% certain of what you’re doing.

That sounds like a bad idea, you would need your CA and your root certs to be completely air gapped for it to be even remotely safe.

Oh shit, I was miserable back when I installed Arch. Dang, you might be onto something there!

That’s strange, apart from installing it, Arch is pretty painless to run if you’re not careless

Impeach the whole thing and reform with more seats and impose a term limit.

Dude opened a fucking highway for them. The shift into authoritarianism started before his presidency but he took it to another level. Now, if the Nazis win the elections, they’ll have all the tools required to legally wreck shit, even before adding some more to wreck shit even further.