That’s my main concern. Having to do a few UNIX-y things to get it sorted doesn’t bother me, as long as I can do the UNIX-y things. 
Any reason to believe the business plan wouldn’t work? Or was it just a preference thing at the time?
Right - I’d have cloud backup of everything. Having to suck down all of it from the cloud would be godawfully unpleasant, though. This may just be an area where my thinking needs a bit of time to evolve.
Lots of “just in case” old backups of accounts from servers I manage, lots of ripped stuff, lots of Screenflow video, Zoom call storage, etc. 
I have a “someday/maybe” task of culling through it, but even if I whittle it down there’s no way I’d get below 8TB.
There is an online demo of the Synology DSM (OS)
As folks have mentioned, these boxes are extremely
versatile, and you can find a “package” for just about
anything you want to do, and with Docker support,
it just keeps growing
I CAN do UNIX-y things and haven’t seen a need in
my usage of Synology.
I’m curious though as to why someone with 16TB of
data (ok maybe 8) would not want to use RAID?
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At this point, mostly price - and cost of entry. I have critical stuff backed up locally, and cloud for everything else.
This might just be a “bite the bullet and do it” thing, but the cost of the RAID stuff feels super-expensive at this point.
Actually I used an older version for years but I finally gave up because a) updates kept breaking stuff and needed me to fiddle constantly to get it working again, b) CrashPlan is a horrendous pig with system resources and it would never get beyond a few Tb before grinding to a halt despite raising its allocated memory in config files (and, as I said, I had already doubled the NAS memory using unofficial solutions).
After having tried to make it work for years, I am thoroughly done with CrashPlan and never want to touch it ever again. I am now backing up using a variety of things including a legacy HubiC 10 Tb plan, which does not back everything up, but everything that’s really critical. That’s also why I’d like my next server to be a Mac Mini with a DAS, to use Backblaze on it.
I would assume that your data is spread across a lot of drives?
Get an empty chassis, and use your existing drives to populate.
Take a look at the demo if you can, I’ve read your posts over the
years. This is absolutely trivial for your skills.
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And that’s the other option (and the exact rationale ) I’m considering. If you did a DAS setup, any preliminary ideas as to what you’d do? Would you do something like the OWC thing, or something else?
I’ll definitely check out the demo - thanks for the help and the vote of confidence.
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I have a 2018 Mac Mini which I’ve been keeping for that purpose but as I keep pushing back on that new server, I might just sell that one and get an M1 instead (low power etc.)
I haven’t been looking closely at enclosures recently but yes, OWC (or possibly Promise) was the first vendor I thought of looking at. Definitely not Drobo.
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The idea of getting a cheapo Intel board and a full tower floated through my mind for a minute, too. Power is definitely a useful consideration though.
I think it’s interesting how back when MPU started, ScanSnap and Drobo were the hotness - and now they’re very much hated with almost equal fervor.
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Based on your reply “old backups of accounts from servers I manage, lots of ripped stuff, lots of Screenflow video, Zoom call storage, etc”: how much of the 16TB do you need restored immediately? I have ripped stuff: not critical at all and if a restore takes a week, so what?
If I go through my data and look at what’s critical (as in: needs to be restored immediately), it’s not even that much. Email would restore from IMAP, ~Documents is critical, … \Volumes\NAS\Movies is not.
I looked at my data and separated critical data from non-critical. There’s stuff that’s “nice to have” but a restore can wait. And I do a regular “spring clean” of the stuff.
That’s a good distinction - I should probably go through and do a little bit more thinking about layers and tiers for backups. 
If you’re looking for a DAS unit, I have the QNAP TR-002, but they also do a 4 bay, the TR-004. Works fine on the M1 Mac, though when I got it before Christmas, the supplied software didn’t work on Big Sur but I set the enclosure to individual drives using the DIP switches on the back and it worked fine. I think the software has been updated and works now (but it’s now being used as RAID 0 for my gaming PC)
I do have a Synology that keeps my data on - this is a DS220+ (I only went the +, as it can run Docker and VM’s, it runs my Pi Hole server). Data is in RAID 1 to make use of the BTRFS filesystem (as need to be in a RAID configuration to make the most of BTRFS, which wasn’t clear when I got it).
If I was buying again, I’d probably have just got the drives setup on a DAS instead. However, Photostation is a key selling point for us, as it collects mine and my wife’s photos and allows us easy viewing, something that I feel iCloud Photos still hasn’t managed to achieve yet.
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I think they wanted to focus on business market. the personal plans were unlimited and you could add a NAS. It also explains why Backblaze is the leader now.