> occasionally digging into kernel bugs

No, it doesn't. I've been self-hosting a multi-node, highly available, and fault-tolerant PostgreSQL setup for years, and I've never had to go to that level. After reading your whole post, I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.

Horror stories stick with me more than success stories, but I'm happy to take the feedback. I'm glad it went well for you, that's a small update for me.