I was using a home built machine for several years as a Nas, and it was fine, but I ultimately upgraded to a Dell R510. They can be had pretty cheap, and have 12x 3.5" bays. I also added an HBA that I plug into a Lenovo sa120 (direct attached storage) I bought, for a total of 24x 3.5" drives.
I mention the sa120 because it just leads to expandability down the road for you. My r510 is one of my most favorite machines. I'm currently migrating data from 15x 4tb drives, over to 6x 10tb drives and I'm going to be shutting the DAS down to save electricity.
The r510 isn't easy on electric usage, but it has been Rock solid for me.
Yeah, I assume most things will work, but I know Linus just recently did a video showing that they were having issues with their 10gbe nics, which was driver support within pfsense. Switched to opnsense and problem was solved. I don't think I'll have any issues, cause I'm using older cards anyway (connectx-2's and connectx-3's).
I currently have a mix of mikrotik and ubiquiti. I've been dumping my ubiquiti gear in favor of mikrotik, just because I want any of my switches to have at least a couple 10gbe ports, and mikrotik is cheaper that ubiquiti for the switches I need.
I haven't had the mikrotik switches long, and I'm really only using one while I'm waiting for the rest of my 10gbe nics to arrive. But the one I'm using is quiet, and just worked (as a switch should). No surprises.
Are you me? Haha! Our setups are very similar, except I've stuck with pfsense (though I'm debating switching to opnsense as I upgrade to 10g). But the saving every watt to keep the wifey happy can't bemofe on point for me. Haha.
I'm seriously debating switching to opnsense. I'm in the process of upgrading my homelab to 10g, and wonder how pfsense will play with my 10g nics. I think I read before that pfsense plays with it fine.... But if not, I'll jump to opnsense.
I also wonder how long pfsense will keep things going for CE... Seems like the writing is on the wall that it isn't going to last, but we'll see.
I was using a home built machine for several years as a Nas, and it was fine, but I ultimately upgraded to a Dell R510. They can be had pretty cheap, and have 12x 3.5" bays. I also added an HBA that I plug into a Lenovo sa120 (direct attached storage) I bought, for a total of 24x 3.5" drives.
I mention the sa120 because it just leads to expandability down the road for you. My r510 is one of my most favorite machines. I'm currently migrating data from 15x 4tb drives, over to 6x 10tb drives and I'm going to be shutting the DAS down to save electricity.
The r510 isn't easy on electric usage, but it has been Rock solid for me.