Or run the docker container if you’re going that direction (https://hub.docker.com/r/tailscale/tailscale).

You should probably look up what the word “operational” means.

And yet they have still been operational for 60 years after that… Funny that the U2 lasted longer than the Soviet Union.

It can be just like you’ve said. You can also run tailscale directly on the system hosting a service and access it directly over the tailscale network.

Just use Snapraid & MergerFS. No special Hardware required and you don’t need to change what is on your disks.

From a quick search: https://perfectmediaserver.com/02-tech-stack/snapraid/

This is how I do it. No striping, normal partitions, different hard drive sizes, pretty easy. This way makes upgrades super easy too. Currently running 76TB mergerfs with 2 14TB Snapraid parity drives.

This honestly sounds like the best solution to this particular problem.