I pay $3 a month for a 2gb (ram) ssd based VPS. I install centmin and reverse proxy my homelab services with a legit domain. (my isp blocks port 80). Source: over 2 years ago

So yeah, it very much depends on your use case, you can always just demo it for one month and see for yourself. If you do, look into centminmod, it's a management tool for hosting websites simply and with great performance. Source: over 2 years ago

Take a look at Debian's documentation on automatic installation using FAI or the Debian installer - more details on these and other apporoaches in The Debian Administrator's Handbook. Source: over 1 year ago

Fully Automated Installation, which I literally just found. Source: over 1 year ago

For network-based Ubuntu installs in our environment FAI has been a great solution. Source: almost 2 years ago

Bare metal install with FAI (after getting used to it, it is really quiet fast and adjustable) after initial reboot config management is handed over to salt with a highstate (i.e. Full config run) on boot-up. Source: about 2 years ago

Not exactly an answer to your question but I’ve used FAI (https://fai-project.org) to just make dynamic images. The scripting is a bitch and the entire process is annoying, but you have control over every step of the install, the final product is an image you can install even over NetBoot and fully automatic. Source: over 2 years ago