It can be just like you’ve said. You can also run tailscale directly on the system hosting a service and access it directly over the tailscale network.

Just use Snapraid & MergerFS. No special Hardware required and you don’t need to change what is on your disks.

From a quick search: https://perfectmediaserver.com/02-tech-stack/snapraid/

This is how I do it. No striping, normal partitions, different hard drive sizes, pretty easy. This way makes upgrades super easy too. Currently running 76TB mergerfs with 2 14TB Snapraid parity drives.

I know that Pixel 7’s and above support it. There are Reddit posts showing they have the feature already. Satellite messaging is just using standard 4G/LTE from Starlink. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is only an OS update away for most newer phones.

Looks like it’s been available on some android devices for at least a month. I don’t know about free though, I think it depends on your carrier. I know T-Mobile has been talking about supporting it using Starlink satellites.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/1ct1no1/satellite_messaging_option_appeared_on_my_pixel_7/ https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/first-spacex-satellites-launch-for-breakthrough-direct-to-cell-service-with-t-mobile