I just use TrueNAS for my storage layer. I don’t love the idea of a proprietary OS running my storage system. It’s just a bunch of ZFS under the hood which a competent data recovery company should be able to handle, if I don’t have backups of my 3TB of clown porn. The proportion of FreeBSD that’s a mystery to me is slightly less than it was in 2015 when I built it but it’s still pretty high.

My recommendation is to KISS with the fundamental layers and play higher in the stack with less critical workloads. Build a web server and a DNS server and reverse proxy and get a feel for how it works before mucking with optimizing the VM host.