I bought a protectli awhile back. Mines 4 port 2.5 gbps nics, and it runs opnsense out the box.

You should take a look at their sfp+ model, if I were in your shoes that’s what I’d be looking at. It’s all in one, works nicely, is incredibly customizable, and is lower power usage than basically anything you’ll build yourself.

I use that for my router/firewall, then I use an off lease dell thin client to run my home assistant server, and a standard off the shelf buffalo nas. If you’re into immich, I’ll recommend jellyfin over Plex. I used it for years but they started collecting more data, sticking their own junk in etc. Jellyfin is open source and works great.

I’m glad to hear this, I keep looking at it. I’m a little worried about the hardware requirements for it though. I keep putting off getting hardware for a dedicated jellyfin server (it’s on my wife’s gaming PC right now and it bugs the heck out of her)

To expand on the 3-2-1 rule for the uninitiated:

3 total copies 2 onsite, using dissimilar media 1 offsite, for disaster recovery