fwiw, local and VPN/tunneled work - they can set up a tunnel to your machine, at which point the data is entirely in your control (there's a "local testing" category in the support area). And I entirely agree with your earlier points, and there are probably other benefits to having that kind of SSD setup.

But did your setup cost $200? And that includes hardware and software. If you had waited a year, would you have saved $200? (depending on when you bought your SSDs, those alone could be a 'yes').