You do not always need a heavy orchestration layer in order to run containers. Particularly for single-host server services and helper agents, systemd already offers a strong life-cycle manager. Podman Quadlet ties that strength together with a daemon-less container execution model.
Why Quadlet?
Classic podman run commands are quick to start with, but for long-lived services reproducibility and manageability become important. Quadlet locks that configuration in via .container files.
A simple service definition
[Unit]
Description=Internal Nginx Service
After=network-online.target
[Container]
Image=docker.io/library/nginx:1.27-alpine
ContainerName=internal-nginx
PublishPort=8080:80
[Service]
Restart=alwaysConclusion
systemd-based service containerisation with Podman Quadlet gives you a clean operating model for small but critical services without standing up a heavy platform.