I deploy to pared down bare metal, but I use containerization for development, both local and otherwise, for me and contributors.

So much easier than trying to get a local machine to be set up identically to a myriad of servers running multiple projects with their idiosyncratic needs.

I like developing on my Qubes daily driver so I can easily spin up a server imitating vm, but if I’m getting your help, especially without paying you, then I want development for you to be as seamless as possible whatever your personal preferred setup.

I feel containerization helps with that.

I use Puppet for distribution of users, firewall rules, SSH hardening + whitelisting, nginx config (rev proxy, static server, etc), Let's Encrypt certs management + renewal + distribution, PostgreSQL config, etc.

The profit from this is huge once you have say 20-30 machines instead of 2-3, user lifecycle in the team that needs to be managed, etc. But the time investment is not trivial - for a couple of machines it is not worth it.

I split it into multiple scripts that get called from one, just for my own sanity.