[turtle]

Drew, they really are server but generally running super low end CPUs. More than sufficient for general tasking and data management. The CPUs just fail to handle heavy load for real intensive compute tasking. Some of the Synology servers are in fact "server grade" with the "xs" series. I just lean away from those because that is too much all in one for my taste. I want more flexibility with my compute resources.

For you, I would totally recommend you get a 4 bay "Value Series" (no "j" or "+" on the end) and plug it into your router. Start with three disks so you have a greater fault tolerance and get familiar with the system.

These Synology NASs running DSM can be your email server, web server, docker host, DNS, DHCP, etc. DSM is really built to be able to do it all and do it well. I don't utilize many of the features available for many reasons, namely I have purpose built components to handle specific tasking. I also grew into this, I didn't start where I am now. Using the Synology Drive is awesome because it negates the need for Google or Dropbox from managing my data. However, I have one of my NASs connected to all my cloud services making backups of them live syncing just like desktop clients would. This is for pretty much all of them, MS, Google, Dropbox and even Box!