Not the parent commenter but I do basically the same as them. It really depends how much you're hosting and how much you want the latest updates. If I didn't want to do any updates to the selfhosted stuff I could probably spend 0 time a month. Most of the stuff I selfhost is only available over my VPN anyway so security isn't a huge concern on those.

Even if I did want to update, it's just a case of pulling the latest version into the docker-compose template and re-running the ansible playbook. Obviously if the upgrade requires more then so be it, but it's no different to any other setup work wise.

Probably the only thing I _need_ to do which I do manually is test my backups. But I have a script for each project which does it so I just SSH on, run the one-liner, check the result and it's done. I do that roughly once a month or so, but I also get emails if a backup fails.

So it can be no time at all. Usually it's probably 1-2 hours a month if I'm taking updates on a semi-regular basis. But that will scale with the more things you host and manage.

I don't see a difference between physical and VPS servers here. I manage everything using automated tools anyway. Why would this take longer for physical?

In other words, the only difference is where the ansible inventory file comes from. Either it's a static list of IPs, or it comes from terraform.