OpenMediaVault VS Yacht

You might want to consider the previously mentioned MergerFS and SnapRAID, or MDADM and LVM for your setup. OpenMediaVault [https://www.openmediavault.org/ is a solid choice in this regard. Additionally, if you're planning to run something like Proxmox, you could look into deploying Starwind CVM on top of it. Pretty much like in this guide: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-virtual-san-vsan-configuration-guide-for-proxmox-vsan-deployed-as-a-controller-virtual-machine-cvm/ .

You would better to install OMV instead. It's a ready to use fileserver solution with web interface.

So I'm working on a similar setup with an ancient desktop my in-laws were getting rid of. I installed OpenMediaVault directly to the hard drive (it's so old that I assume it wouldn't work too well as a hypervisor), with a 4TB external HDD attached. OMV supports Docker by means of a plug-in and I'm running a Jellyfin container with no issues at all. I'm still manually downloading everything to the HDD but *arr containers are my next step, as well as setting up a gluetun container to route all that through a VPN.

That is possible (it's automated to a certain extent). It also depends on the NAS OS. Unraid, for example, can work with drives of different sizes while using the largest one for parity. TrueNAS uses ZFS so you won't be able to just add a drive to your RAIDZ and expand it. There's also openmediavault: https://www.openmediavault.org/ that uses Linux Software RAID and you can add a new drive there but you can't combine drives of different sizes. And there's also Starwinds NAS that supports both Linux Software RAID and ZFS: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas. Plus, I would avoid SMR drives in RAID: https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

I'd put it like that: if you have a spare PC, then it's definitely worth trying. I would also look into openmediavault (minimal RAM needs): https://www.openmediavault.org/ and Starwinds NAS (supports both ZFS and Linux software RAID): https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas

Your current PC looks very decent for a lab. Proxmox on it, then one Linux VM with Docker, another VM for NAS with something lite and easy like openmediavault: https://www.openmediavault.org/ or Starwinds NAS: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas and Plex separately. And other stuff in VMs or containers.

You can try Yacht https://github.com/SelfhostedPro/Yacht

If you have a dashboard and prefer UI, check this out https://github.com/SelfhostedPro/Yacht

Portainer looks popular but it's actually not easy to use, can't see which container is upgradable and doesn't even care to support mobile.

I found an alternative which is still a very young project but I've replaced Portainer.

https://github.com/SelfhostedPro/Yacht

Hey, just as a note, Yacht has some stats and has compose support: https://github.com/selfhostedpro/yacht

I've also built a semi-popular (15 million downloads) Docker container UI mostly on my own (https://github.com/SelfhostedPro/Yacht) and enjoy doing some prototype development work when the opportunity presents itself. Salary requirement is $150k total comp. Must be a remote position. PM me if you'd like to get in touch and discuss an opportunity.

This is what I did with my app that started out as a flask app (has since moved to fastapi+vuejs but the flask version is still alive in the legacy-flask branch) https://github.com/selfhostedpro/yacht). If you have any questions or want any tips, feel free to reach out.