Nas software is more friendly and just works. Windows doesn’t have a great raid option, but nas do. Windows desktop also has alot of artificial limits and is less stable and will reboot for patches at inconvenient times.
I simplest terms, it’s like use a flat screw driver on a Philips head. It’ll technically work, but there are just plain better options that will work better and easier.
Ah okay, I’d recommend softether as an option as it doesn’t technically NAT changes to put into place. (easier if you can, but can work without it)
Skip the pi’s
Grab a refurb mini pc off of amazon and max out the ram, and install proxmox. Should have a nice little sandbox for under 150.
The first question to ask is why? Exchange on prem is nothing but a pending security breech. Especially at a small business without dedicated experts and resources. You’re realistically not going to save money either with how cheap hosted email is in comparison to a virtualization stack underlying storage, and monthly management time. You’ll also have less uptime than Microsoft.
Coming from someone who was managing exchange on prem 6 months ago until I left that train wreck of an environment.
Proxmox is the best option here
Just use zfs within proxmox, only reason you’d do disk passthrough to vm would be if you’re using esxi and want to use zfs still.
No, everyone needs a Colo datacenter’s worth of hardware in their moist basement
Don’t worry about it, no one wants to hack your plex server xD just don’t expose things directly to the internet and you’ll be fine.