The vetting process is not a problem. The filling a node with data takes a lot of time independently of its size. When I said - start with a one node, I mean exactly that.
Please use this Realistic earnings estimator to get an idea how long it may take to fill up all allocated space.
All that time three other disks could not wear, if they are not attached 
Of course, if you plan to use this space not only for storagenode - then it makes sense to have the only one node.
The maintenance would be to write once the docker-compose.yaml and use it for the first node and add a next one when the first is almost full and do docker-compose up -d.
Regarding node dashboard - please take a look on [Tech Preview] Multinode Dashboard Binaries and Multinode Dashboard Docker image
Ports - yes, they should be configured (once) and added to the monitoring (once).