2TB is perfectly fine for a NAS. Not everyone needs high capacity

It is very much not cheaper in the cloud assuming you already have a on prem data center. The hardware stays mostly loaded and unlike the cloud we don’t pay for usage.

I don’t want to spend a bunch of time troubleshooting something. Having a way to move my stuff to a different host when the host crashing is very nice.

A three node cluster gives you much more flexibility and potentially uptime (assuming you do some sort of HA)

If you server has a major issue it is really nice to be able to offload to different hardware. I learned this the hard way.

What hardware are you looking at?

I would do a three node cluster (maybe even 5 node)

The cloud is cheaper hosting things like websites that need HA. However if you are doing big compute or storing lots of data it will not be cheaper.

They asked for recommendations…

This is so true. You can’t expect your home server to ever be compatible to enterprise setups. Companies who have stuff on prem are still paying for redundant hardware and software which requires money and skill to maintain.

I’d rather not use something created by borderline terrorists

Get a better CPU?