Would a WSeB or eCS solution support hot swap of hard drives? Creating RAID arrays? Are there already some easy-to-install software packages that would set-up the web interface used to configure the various types of access to the data?
Has someone already done that and could share the experience (in terms of hardware configuration requirements, steps to follow, etc)?
Well, no, no, and yes. Hot swap, and raid, is really not all that useful for home systems. They may be useful for large networks, where down time is really not on, but IMO they are not cost effective, or even desirable, in a home situation.
A few years ago, I built my own "NAS", using an older computer that I had sitting around (Asus A8N-SLI, in an old case). It had a gigabit network adapter, and a SATA drive, so I decided to give it a try. I added a 1 TB SATA drive (formatted JFS), and added:
ECS 2.1 (or 2.2 b2).
SAMBA server.
Peter Moylan's FTP server.
Peter Moylan's Weasel mail server (now with IMAP). I also use STunnel in front of them, for secure connections.
Peter Moylan's MajorMajor (not yet used, but it works).
WEB/2 (not really used, but it works).
RSYNC (used with backups).
PMVNC for remote control.
It works great with eCS, and windows (XP, 7, and now 10). I have also used it with Linux, but the Linux permissions thing is a pain.
A few months ago, that computer died, so I replaced it with a newer machine, which also works great (just replaced the motherboard, CPU, and memory). Initially, I had a problem with the new NIC, but the latest Arca Noae NIC update released the MMRE driver (for Realtek), and that works well. One major advantage, is that I can use that machine, if my main system quits.
You don't need a super powerful machine, all you need is a single processor (but multiple processors work too), and appropriate drive capacity for what you need. You probably want SATA drives (Max 2 TB), to keep the price down, and the performance up (IDE and SCSI drives are way too expensive for what you get).
HTH...