YT videos get taken down for any reason these days - fake copyright claims, hacking or just the creator getting fed up with YT’s policies. Entire channels vanish with no warning. Valuable videos that generate income suddenly become private only. It is not an open platform, it’s a monetised platform first and foremost.

If you have these videos under your control, then if they’re no longer watchable online, you still have them. That’s exactly what TA is for and does a superb job of. Basically every YT video I watch that I think is useful, I hit the Save button. Some of them are indeed no longer available. I have entire channels downloading so if the creator does close up shop, at least I’ve got their latest.

Obviously you need a lot of storage space - mine is over 5TB and growing. But it’s worth it.

Also, it avoids the YT before, mid and after ads.

This. With a proper backup strategy, you are reducing the probability of a catastrophic sequence of events. It becomes P(some unlikely event) x P(some other unlikely event) x … Etc. for as many events you can think of and/or can afford to mitigate.

As you say, the risk will never be zero. And even the best-laid plans can fail - the Gitlab incident a few years back saw five layers of backups and disaster preparedness fail.

Really, all you can do is backup your data using standard methods, and TEST THE RESTORE before you need to rely on it!

Can recommend my APC SMT1500I. Original batteries lasted 9.5 years. Accidentally plugged a fan heater into it once and it survived. Most reliable device in my rack.

If someone or something malicious gets a shell account on my systems, then it at least stops them doing anything system-wide. And yes, if a script is going to request admin rights to do something, it’ll stop right at the sudo prompt. Passwordless, it could do stuff without you even being aware of it.

Whether or not this is a line of defence at all is open to debate.

Heavy computation rack is in an unheated conservatory with a window cracked open. Keeps the HDD temperatures around 30 degrees. Temperature monitoring from my PDU shows a 3’C rise from the inlet to the exhaust side of the rack. This stuff is mostly powered off when not in use. In summer, it can get to 35’C in that room so I shut everything down at that point.

24/7 rack is in my lounge and vents the heat into the room (helps a little bit with heating costs). Top of the rack is about 37’C but I’ve seen it around 45’C with all my hypervisors doing stuff. Nothing complains. As long as the intake air is within the manufacturer’s stated range, it’s fine.

Might want to consider redirecting the heat into the house rather than venting it outside.

1. Domain auth (1 place to set passwords and SSH keys), no root SSH
2. SSH by key only
3. Passworded sudo (last line of defence)
4. Only open firewall hole is OpenVPN with security dialled up high
5. VLANs - laptops segregated from servers
6. Strict firewall rules between VLANs
7. TLS on everything
8. Daily update check alerts (no automatic updates, but persists until I deal with them)
9. Separate isolated syslog server for audit trails
10. Cold backups