Do you have some examples of the superior customer hardware options? I currently use 2x12 bay Synology NAS and one of my favorite parts of it is the hardware, the easy access to the hotswap hard drives.
If I could get that form factor, but with a custom NAS software solution, I’d be very interested.
I run a Sliger 3701 [0] with an ASRock Rack Ryzen motherboard (choose B650D4U or X570D4U to suit) using TrueNAS Scale. This replaced my old FreeNAS Atom C2000 setup that ran for over a decade with zero issues.
Add in a Mikrotik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIE [1] for high speed networking. Choose your own HBA.
Thank you for the link, currently my needs are more 3.5” high capacity drives, and less SSD storage (aside for a TB or 2 of cache. I just don’t need SSDs for my media collection, it seems like a waste when I can pick up 24-26+ TB drives for so much cheaper.
If I could get that form factor, but with a custom NAS software solution, I’d be very interested.