I’m probably not the best person to answer, I only really got into this 3 years ago when I took a chance on setting up a lemmy server, and I have learned so so much (and am clearly still learning based on the intrusion!).

There are great tools and resources, but the biggest challenge has been finding people to help who actually know what they’re doing for when I inevitably break something. Gazby has saved Lemmy quite a few times when something stupid has happened.

There always seems another layer to it too, you think you understand something and it turns out it goes deeper. So many different technologies and services interacting together. I’d hate to think what a real sysadmin has to go though each day!