Not really, the OP was already using docker, but even with IAC on a small home lab like this you're going to modify one or two small things manually here and there over the years.

Sure it can help, but it's just not a one fix solution people thing. If you want a good test of your IAC, just provisioning a brand new environment first time using only your iac.

If you hand modify the already IAC system , you are not doing IAC. IAC with CI/CD is what we do. We don't even use AWS Console , we do everything in terraform/opentofu code.

> you're going to modify one or two small things manually here and there over the years.

Huh? This is a strange assumption to make. Is your premise that IAC can't ever be truly reproducible?

If you are modifying things manually then you're not doing IAC.

Yeah as soon as you start hand tweaking the system it breaks IAC.

The first rule of IAC club is that you do not hand modify your infrastructure.

The second rule of IAC club is that you do not hand modify your infrastructure.