Well my day job is managing Linux systems so it was no brainer, I run other workload on the NAS too, not just file shares, and doing that on off the shelf NAS would just be a PITA.
Wow consumer ITX boards are expensive, rather limited, and look like they will suck power too.
The what now?
I’ve been meaning to try Zitatel which apparently have unique feature of being able to act as LDAP server, that might be one option