I’m convinced that what users ultimately and primarily want is reliability, and that’s way less depending on hardware selection than what most people think.
Ultimately it really is way more about software than it is about hardware.
It’s like Russ said, it’s about proper operations to have stuff like regular backups (and more, remember it’s about operations not just installations, so look what to do if HW fails, how is your MTTR then etc).
I would add that this should be automated else you will forget about some day soon, and humbly
propose to use openHABian with its bundled software solutions for this purpose.
Even the hardware issues with SD cards (not specific to RPis by the way) you can mitigate in software.
Software, too, is the reason not to run on a NAS. There have been various issues with the OH build on Synology.
Trading off, the efforts users need to spend on getting that to work (if reliably at all) will never reach nowhere the quickness and simplicity of flashing an image to RPi that just works afterwards.
And if reliability is what you’re after, with any attempt at a home-grown solution, work and problems just begin there.
If you know how to and like to take on these challenges for fun or whatever other reason that’s absolutely fine.
Most users however don’t want to waste any of their time on the server part rather than openHAB so that’s why the recommendation is what it is, see link.
