doggone

Great article. I have had a media server in several forms since iTunes first came into being. Initially just music, ripping all my CDs plus some vinyl.  Then DVDs.  
The host mac has evolved from a G4 tower bought in the late 90s to a 2009 Mac mini.  Now I use a first gen rMBP (2012) that was retired when I got my touch bar MBP.  The rMBP should last a good few years and is definitely an improvement over the mini.
For storage space, I moved away from internal drives with the mini.  Then as the library got bigger, it was getting hard to store the media on an external drive and also back up.
So I plumped for a Drobo 5N.  Pros were that I could grow the storage space as drives got cheaper, recycle old drives, have a safety net if drives fail and also use as a Time Machine backup.  Cons are that the initial investment was high and that having my iTunes library on the Drobo means I can't do a time machine backup on that.
Still, I have over 2TB of media reasonably secure and all Macs are backed up via TM.   I no longer have to worry about space since I can plan well ahead for that.