Sounds like you have a nice set up.
Apple still sells an app they call macOS server for $19.99, but like Apple Remote Desktop ($79.99) it has been ignored to death for years and usually receives 1 star reviews.
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I’d say it probably has a few more features but honestly I haven’t dug into it enough. It’s been nearly two years since version 6 was announced for Mac. I’m guessing that version 7 is coming hopefully late this year and I want to really test it out more. I also use Screens as a backup (love the UI) and I want version 5 there as well.
I’m curious if you went the TrueNAS route.
Surprisingly, to date yours was the only mention of TrueNAS here on the forum.
I’ve been quite enamored with TrueNAS and the zfs file system.
I’ve build a few TrueNAS systems (using rack-mounted server cases) over time and never had any (support) issues with them. For my own ease of use, I switched to Synology when the 1621XS+ came out as the all-in-one package was compelling in my current home office setup. Unfortunately, no space for my dream rack mentioned above at the moment unless I actually sit on top of it.
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I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Honestly i’m leaning towards the QNAP QTS Hero stuff especially now because version 5.0 is in beta.
I’ll get around to eventually building a TrueNAS system but I think a 4 or 5 Bay QNAP ZFS system would be ideal to cut my teeth on.
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Adding a note here as my journey continues. I’ve got the QNAP TR-004U arriving tomorrow, and it looks like - even with software configuration - you basically have to install the whole thing at once.
Other options that I would think shouldn’t be too difficult - like getting a striping setup (2 drives) and then adding 2 drives for mirroring - aren’t possible.
So I’m playing “data leapfrog” with my collection of normally-unused little hard drives to get all my data off my two 8TB external drives that I’m going to shuck and put in the array, along with two new 8TB drives. That way I can get the whole mirror + stripe thing done up as a 16TB volume from the get-go. 
Do you mean pairs of drives in raid 0 and then the two pairs mirrored?
Wouldn’t you better better with raid 5 across 4 disks? More storage a better parity.
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There are arguments for RAID10 as you outlined. Speed (due to stripe) and redundancy (mirror) being the big ones.
RAID5 would give you more storage, and allow recovery if a single drive fails.
Since you have a QNAP, I think it supports ZFS, which would be my choice. For four drives, a RAIDZ1 setup would be nice. ZFS is very robust and I really like its features and simplicity.
I believe the QNAP supports this, but only if you use software control, rather than the DIP switches (i.e. run a striped array and a mirrored array). I couldn’t test, as I only had the two bay version. However, if you were looking to stripe two drives and then mirror that array, you’re right, I don’t think it can do that.
@JohnAtl The QNAP TR-004U is just an enclosure for the drives, so the Mac deals with the filesystem, as in this case it’ll be plugged in to the Mac itself.
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Somewhere I’d read that RAID 10 (mirroring / striping) was the way to fly.
Now your comment has me reading up on RAID 5. So my understanding is that in RAID 5, any one disk could have a problem, and I’d be able to rebuild - as opposed to RAID 10, where I could theoretically lose two disks as long as they weren’t the same drive in the striping config.
That would give me way, way more storage capacity. Do you think that’s the best way to fly?
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Yeah. You can do mirroring, or striping. Or you can do both. But whatever you set an array up as initially is how it’s going to be in perpetuity - you can’t add drives to an existing array in the future.
You’re correct. That’s the way I’d do it.
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Ah, OK.
Isn’t that a limitation of the RAID then?
I’m a bit hazy on the RAID levels - I just know I went SHR1 on my Synology because it meant that I could add/change drives at a later date and they didn’t have to be the same size if that was an issue in the future.
Full disclosure: I’m far, far from a RAID expert. 
QNAP devices have some limitations, and this particular device is more limited than some of the others.
I’d asked about the possibility of incrementally adding disks to eventually get a RAID mirror / stripe setup, and they said:
If you have a TR-004U set with JBOd with 1 drive, and if the nas is in software mode, then you can likely add a single drive raid group to the pool. But we don’t officially support it. You would have to move the data off the drives and re-format from scratch in order to add more disk to the existing RAID group.
Our other units would let you get more space when you replace all the drives with larger ones, but the TR-004U does not have this feature
And when I asked, “If I were to modify my plan and have two drives with RAID striping initially (16 TB total - single volume), would it be possible to then add two more 8 TB drives later (simultaneously - not separately) and tell it to use them for mirroring the 16 TB volume? Or would I still have to move data off the drives?”
The response was:
Unfortunately that is not supported and I think it won’t even work in software mode. That would effectively be raid migration which TR-004U does not support, and even our NAS doesn’t support raid migration from RAID 0.
Hope that’s helpful?
How do you plan to back up 16TB?
Right now it’s 12, spread over 2 8TB externals, backed up with Backblaze. This being DAS shouldn’t change that plan.
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And…the “data leapfrog” game is finalizing.
Cleared everything off my 2 8 TBs by copy everything to smaller, older HDs using my SATA dock. Got the 8 TBs shucked, added two more, QNAP is in RAID 5, and data is finally copying back.
In a couple days I’ll have all my data on the QNAP.
As a side note for anybody looking at one of these, it looks like solid construction. It’s heavy, even without the drives. But setting it up wasn’t hard at all. Pop tray out, insert drives. And despite my old PC repair instincts, I even put all four screws in for each drive. 
The software setup was easy. About 10 minutes after getting the software installed (and jumping through macOS’s privacy hoops) everything was good - including the formatting with Disk Utility.
Still don’t have the rack to put it in yet, but one thing at a time. Thanks for all the advice everybody!
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You’ll be enjoying that setup! I am still learning new stuff to do on my NAS every week.
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