New To MT

Hello Everyone,
Let me start with Merry Christmas to everyone. I have been building hotspot for apartment complexes since 2004, however I have never used MT. I have a new project and would like to use MT however all this information is overwhelming. I have a few simple questions?
Where do I start?
Can the dude and user manager be on a cloud server? ie: digital ocean?
Any advise is welcome.
Thanks

What wil you do? setup a hotspot?