I have worked with Docker/WSL for a number of years and it is more difficult compared to Docker in Linux. There are a lot a unique quirks and bugs that are an absolute pain to deal with.
Would not recommend for any relatively complex use case and certainly not for a server.
It’s basic, but rsync is a reliable changes-only solution. You can do push or pull on a cronjob.
Ports are probed and scanned constantly so a random port doesn’t make so much difference. I would use a strict firewall with the server IP whitelisted.
+1 for Ansible Vault
Containers have fixed host names already, why do you need static IPs on the internal network?
I guess if you were an image host running a thumbnailing service or something 🤔
Why would you use k8s for image hosting?
I use bucket storage from my cloud provider with a subdomain. With this kind of setup you can get access control and a CDN out of the box.
The first open source contribution I made was to caddy!
I’m a simple man with a pi4 for my docker containers, one switch, so not much compared to my PC.
Would probably get a second pi4 if I need more resources.
I have a Pi4 running octoprint, pi-hole and some of my own containers.
The rest I run on a Hetzner VM.