How's the noise from that smallish fan?
But, only 1Gbps Ethernet. And seems rather more expensive. And judging by the power supply rating and the CPU, I suspect it's not as efficient.
I have it on a table like 50 cm from me and I can't hear anything beyond a quiet hum.
Not sure what is the pricing where you live but here in Europe the AS5304T is on par with something like the HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus which is a pre-built small-factor x86-based computer with 4x3.5"bays. I am running OMV on it without any issues. It might meet the size and efficiency requirements you have.
As a complete newcomer to OMV (been using it maybe for a week), I think for smaller FOSS projects it's extremely important to conserve manpower so the main product still gets updated and the volunteers don't burn out. That's why I think moving from a plugin to Portainer is a great improvement in all regards because 1. less work for whoever was maintaining the native plugin before 2. more features because Portainer is maintained by a completely separate group of people. This could probably be said about other plugins, too.
One thing that I noticed is very common in FOSS projects is lot of people with ideas but not a lot of people with knowledge or time to contribute. This is not me pointing fingers at anyone but it's very easy for 10 people to argue what framework is the best to use for the UI when in the end it's one person who will do all the coding.
So for what it's worth thank to everyone who keep the ship sailing, as a new user I'd say you've done a great job.
