I have immich running on a server that's under the stairs. It's a bit loud, but it's out of the way. I can only access it over SSH.

For backups, I wrote a shell script to do it. I just plug in my external drive, run the script, and unplug it again. The next day I'll swap the drive for one that I keep in my workplace locker. There's also a mirrored RAID for the server. That's 4 copies in total.

Yeah, it's still a bit of work. I couldn't imagine teaching anyone else how to do it.