Ok I started this thread to discuss a totally imaginary system.
One that looks more like a traditional IT solution to the WHS issue.
Why?
Because it seems we have quite a few IS guys or at least very knowledgable guys in this forum.
And being a Network Admin myself I am interested in how as a collective mind we would have addressed the whole whs issue.

Since it's my idea I will throw my opinion on the table first.
I like to take a rather holistic approach addressing the whole enchilada.

So at the incoming port.
I would like Ladino's ASA5505 with a SEC+ Lic please
run that to my Extreme 400-48T from there have four + 1gbe ports trunked to the storage pool server.
A dual proc 1166 win2k8 file server with lovely raid controllers with very nice cache.
Big raid sets GPT/Dynamic for flexability

Then for the front end server, use either a ex495 or a home built just to handle the web interface.
On the client use Iscsi initiators to mount the storage ala IPNAS.
So in mymovies your database on the WHS would point to you Iscsi mount locations.

This would allow for some serious transferes with no load on the WHS at all, and you could loose your entire WHS with no data loss, not to mention if you whs gets hacked it's a simple restore project vs a total rebuild.