I've been wading through the past 2 months of messages because I was far too incompetent at systems management (and hardware) to even pose the question correctly.

Ideally, I'd like my NAS to have a VLAN'd off way of sectioning my security camera footage and my website so I don't get locked out of it somehow. I heard that I need to somehow create a topology that involves a WAP, Switch, the physical chassis with the NAS in it, and the actual modem/router into the wall. I want to have a streaming server for music/video, a Hugo website, an email server, and a file system where I can store projects just in case I need to access them somewhere other than my home.

I've also heard others suggest some of the larger drives for the RAID array, and I've seen various things suggested such as Thomas Krenn's "mdraid", which requires a "Hardware RAID controller" which makes me wonder what this thing actually is. I need to do more research into it, but I'm just a little stumped on how the drives fit together (physically and logically). Thanks for the help!