Depends on the server. A VM you just installed on your own machine? A lab machine on the proxmox cluster? Probably.
A new cloud VM running in another city? I would trust it by default, but you don't have a lot of choice in many corporate environments.
Funnily enough, there is a solution to this: SSH has a certificate authority system that will let your SSH clients trust the identity of a server if the hostkey is signed and matches the domain the SSH CA provided.
Like with HTTPS, this sort of works if you're deploying stuff internally. No need to check fingerprints or anything, as long as whatever automation configured your new VM signs the generated host key. Essentially, you get DV certificates for SSH except you can't easily automate them with Let's Encrypt/ACME because SSH doesn't have tooling like that.
A new cloud VM running in another city? I would trust it by default, but you don't have a lot of choice in many corporate environments.
Funnily enough, there is a solution to this: SSH has a certificate authority system that will let your SSH clients trust the identity of a server if the hostkey is signed and matches the domain the SSH CA provided.
Like with HTTPS, this sort of works if you're deploying stuff internally. No need to check fingerprints or anything, as long as whatever automation configured your new VM signs the generated host key. Essentially, you get DV certificates for SSH except you can't easily automate them with Let's Encrypt/ACME because SSH doesn't have tooling like that.