Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Think Raspi5/N100 NUC boxes as the target hardware. I don't think those would be negatively impacted by running Docker or Caddy. Isn't the performance cost of containers minimal these days? I had similar thoughts in the past, but when I looked up performance comparisons between running something on docker vs without a container, the resulting performance was practically identical.
The problem is not containerization per se, I run containers both in my personal systems and at work. If you extremely optimize for compilers, the performance difference can be trimmed down to 2%. I think for most of us, it's 5%-6% band, and it's OK for non-loaded servers. My qualm is about trimming fairly standard features and offloading it to somewhere else. A single HTTP service + traefik (or Apache/NGINX reverse…
How heavy are talking, and what would be the measured impact?
I have worked on small teams (3~4 people) where we had to use our own infrastructure for regulatory reasons. I also self-host a few things as a hobby. I don't think Nginx or Caddy were ever a bottleneck, and at the human level, they saved more resources than not using them. I don't remember the last time I exposed something to a network using their bundled http server directly rather than a reverse proxy. I don't like wasting computational resources of course, but % wise, 'optimizing' them by not using containers or a reverse proxy wouldn't net any visible gains - there's usually other low hanging fruit that gives you more for your time.