For me it’s not about what else I can run on it. I want my services separated from my storage devices. If I throw everything into one physical machine it takes everything down if something goes wrong. It’s also harder to do upgrades without needing to replace entire machines
The way I see it, a box of drives still needs something to connect it to your network.
And that something that can only do a basic connection costs only a little less than something that can run a bunch of other stuff too.
You can see why it all gets bundled together.
For me it’s not about what else I can run on it. I want my services separated from my storage devices. If I throw everything into one physical machine it takes everything down if something goes wrong. It’s also harder to do upgrades without needing to replace entire machines