I went with the virtual appliance when I installed Home Assistant several years ago, turned out to be a great decision looking at how it’s architected. I only self-host the database separately, which i’ve found easier to manage.
the fact that the storage usage keeps growing
There should be a setting to reduce how long Home Assistant retains data for - I removed the limit on mine, however its possible that on newer versions they’ve changed the default
Hope you find a solution though - I think node red (capable of doing dashboards on its own) with something else is going to get you part way there.