NC seems to either work completely or it doesnt, barely an inbetween there.

Its fine for me for two years and going. But I only have two users and maybe 200 GB of data. My 16 gigs of ram barely goes above 20%, my 4 thread oldschool xeon usually stays at <5% usage.

Doing sysadmin stuff for 20 yrs probably helps though.

You don’t really need anything to get started, just 20 years of experience.