I recommend ext4 and ECC RAM modules. I use this setup. All my clients are Linux machines, so I use NFS for the sake of simplicity.
I want to set up a file server on my home LAN with just consumer-grade
hardware, and run Debian stable on it. For hardware, I am probably
going to get a refurbished mid-range tower with a four to six 3.5" SATA
drive capacity, and put WD Reds in it.
What I'm not sure of which filesystem to use. I could just use ext4
with RAID5 or RAID6 to get striping with some fault tolerance (i.e. time
to replace a failed drive without losing everything). ZFS looks easier,
but only if you're on BSD. btrfs sounds like ZFS for Linux, but it
appears to still be of beta quality, and I can't tell whether it can yet
do striping with parity. Any advice?
Regards,
Aidan Gauland