You are a bad son for not just doing it for your mom before she had to call someone in.

Depends on whether you want your NAS to just be NAS or you want to be more like a server with docker containers etc. I use mine for just storage and set up the ZFS in Proxmox and using Turnkey file server as an interface for setting up shares,etc. They have a template in Proxmox for the Turnkey File Server and it uses almost no resources.

Tons of people use them for servers.