I wouldn't say I'm anything more than a slightly seasoned user, but in my case, I'm running a node (nostr-rs-relay) on #TrueNAS box in my home network and I backup all my notes to it. It is accessible only via the VPN so I don't have to worry about spam.

I would like to run a public relay which would only accept notes with me as an author, recipient or in which I'm tagged... But I still don't have that up and running.

I would also like to solve the problem of media hosting. There are some great services like Nostr.build but I would prefer to have full control. So I'm debating running something like void cat on a VPS somewhere in the wild.

Unless you are sysadmin or an IT enthusiast, I would suggest using available paid services in a business environment and only make sure, that you have multiple backups of everything. You can start self hosting later when your business scales up.