Managing it is fine. It expects you to understand ZFS more than a turnkey RAID 5 + btrfs job, but has an OK UI and seems born out of the fact ZFS people want that customization, not forcing you fend for yourself. I read a 15 minute explainer, built a pool, and didn't have to think about it at all other than replacing a failed drive last month. And all that took was a quick google to make sure I was doing it right, which is exactly how I replaced drives in a standalone nas.

I currently plug a USB3 4-bay disk enclosure into my homelab server for this, but the cabling is messy and it doesn’t support 20TB drives. I could upgrade to a newer enclosure, but I’d rather have a “real” rack mount system with drive bays.

This is much larger I think (and it bugs me that it’s not an even number of drives, and the offset of the drives is unpleasant) but it’s rackable so that’s a plus.

The only thing I’d want to know is sound (and I’m sure I can find a YouTube video).

I’ve been looking for an excuse to go all-in on a Ubiquiti setup… Thanks for mention this, I wasn’t aware Ubiquiti had a NAS product.

https://github.com/NeccoNeko/UNVR-diy-os/blob/main/IMAGES.md

I only wish they do a 2 Bay or 4 Bay version. Or better yet something like Time Capsule. 2 Bay + Ubnt Express.