The setup per node is super simple, Ubuntu 20.04, install Docker, and then one command to add the new node to the cluster, and one more command to add a disk.
(Ceph version 16 switched to cephadm for deploying and managing a cluster and it's a lot easier now than with previous versions.)
With just 4 nodes I'm already saturating a 1Gb connection on my client (Ryzen desktop).
Perhaps the most surprising thing for me was how stable and forgiving a native CephFS client is on my Linux laptop. After waking up from sleep, it takes about a second to reconnect.
This weekend I'm planning on expanding to 7 nodes. With 7 nodes total power usage should be ~31 watts (not counting network switch), which is less than my current 6 disk ZFS RAIDZ2 setup in my desktop.