Is there a special reason for Windows Server Essentials 2016 or a Microsoft system?
I would recommend considering something like FreeNAS to be more reliable and not as performance hungry as a full blown Windows would be.
Especially FreeNAS is really easy to deploy and monitor, so everyone would be able to replace a drive or create a new share.
As it goes to simple shares you might want something like an AD oder LDAP to manage you users, which is possible with FreeNAS - but not as convenient as a graphical setup - as Windows provides it - would be. BUT there is a simple way to manage users through FreeNAS wo/ AD oder LDAP.
In terms of Hardware I would recommend you to take a look at the FreeNAS docs if you think about using it.
(http://doc.freenas.org/11/freenas.html)