You don’t want hardware raid. Some options you can research:
- Mdadm - Linux software raid
- ZFS - Combo raid and filesystem
- Btrfs - A filesystem that can also do raid things
Some OS options to consider:
- Debian - good if you want to learn to do everything yourself
- Truenas Scale - Comercial NAS OS. I bit of work to get started, but very stable once going.
- Unraid - Enthusiast focused NAS OS. Not as stable as Truenas, but easier to get started and a lot of community support.
There are probably other software/OS’s to consider, but those are the ones I have any experience with. I personally use ZFS on Truenas with a lot of help from this YouTube channel. https://youtube.com/@lawrencesystems
I would be inclined to think that if you are just renting a machine or VM and all the configuration/maintenance is your problem it would be close enough. But I am not a mod and don’t want to be.