I think a big improvement to these test would be to show what actually gets send. You can do this with a certificate and a proxy.

Or a openwrt to make it L3

Can you elaborate why you think you need much more PCIe network cards? Technically you can do with 1 single LAN port with all your VLANs.

You configure the VLANs on the router then make a single trunk port to a switch. then have that switch divide the VLANs on the ports you desire. this can be a L2 switch.

What is holding you back in regards to VLANs?

I know their is one at I2P not sure about tor yet.

Currently I run Talos on a VM on scale. I went with Truecharts. The plan for me is to run it on bare metal at some point.

Welcome captains!

You can choose a slower train for scale. Go for the stable release or even the enterprise release. Update once in a few months or so.

I went with Talos OS for my apps after the mess from IX-systems and for the most part it has been set and forget.

https://massgrave.dev/

All files are official Microsoft ISO files. This has everything you need including explanation and instructions how you can verify its legitimize. and how to activate windows

To bypass the forced Microsoft account you can create a unattend file and pre configure the ISO to make a local account.