With docker-conpose it took less than 20 mins to setup the system across several machines and have it working. Definitely worth investigating.
Pro tip 1, use it to strip out any languages you don’t need and other optimisation techniques like reordering streams will save space and reduce transcoding overheads.
Pro tip 2, You’ll encoded fastest if you can offload to a GPU, I did this in two gaming pcs with decent albeit 7 year old, Nvidia cards, but you’ll get slightly better results (barely noticeable quality wise, but slightly smaller) through a CPU encode, it’ll just takes about 7 to 20 times as long.
I use a KVM over IP.
I made my own tiny pilot device for less than £100 and it has worked flawlessly for a few years.
This assumes your server has a hdmi output, if not you will need a VGA to hdmi or similar converter, danger of it becoming a bit of a hodge-podge of adapters, but hey, if it works, it works!