Dual Mac setup

[Righty27]

I’m planning to move from my retired Intel iMac, which had been stuck on High Sierra, to Apple Silicon hardware, whilst routinely covering a minimum of two separate locations, and at least one has to be a MacBook/portable that will not contain my personal data (work laptop). The other might be a Mac Studio, or potentially another MacBook generally in clamshell mode (TBC). Currently, an internal 2TB SSD contains all my Pro Tools data, VIs/samples, etc. The first of the new hardware is a MacBook Pro 16-inch M1 Max (10-core CPU / 32-core GPU / 32GB RAM / 1TB SSD). Notwithstanding the current Pro Tools compatibility situation with Apple Silicon/Monterey, which is beyond my control obviously, I plan to do fresh installs of all apps, plugins, etc. and migrate data from the iMac’s SSD (in an external enclosure) manually, as opposed to Migration Assistant, for example.

Questions/looking for advice on:

(i) Using external SSDs for all the data (including PT), VIs/samples, etc. - nothing too fancy e.g. Samsung T7 2TB drive(s). This setup allows me to simply carry my data with me without necessarily always moving the Mac(s). However, I am concerned regarding performance (understand it should be fine in theory but nothing like actual user experience), encryption (mounting these APFS-formatted drives on different Macs), using the same usernames/passwords (file-locking, etc.) and backups. For example, I assume that Time Machine backups on each Mac (with the external drive(s) connected) would be treated as an independent set? What about performance if using an external boot drive containing my whole system, in effect bypassing the internal drive in the work machine?

(ii) I previusly used Carbon Copy Cloner to create bootable external drives, however understand that in the ‘new world’, this either no longer works or has become quite complex. If just data however, could CCC still be used to update a ‘remote’ drive and sync back on return to ‘base’?

(iii) Alternatively, is there a genuinely reliable way to sync two Macs over the Internet, including data, library files, etc.? I’ve seen the likes of Resilio and understand the usual Cloud syncing options, including iCloud, however these require use of specific folder hierarchies, agents running in the background, etc. when I would have hoped that APFS might have allowed for something specifically for this type of use-case.

Thanks in advance - experience/comments regarding any of the above, or options I’ve not considered, are appreciated!