About a year ago ago I bit the bullet and frankestiend together a TrueNAS scale box. I hated the idea of the DIY route and stuck with frustrating SOHO nas devices for way too long. An all in one NAS product that has an app store or supports containers is nice in theory but in my experience always ended up with a NUC running proxmox sitting next to the NAS.

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.