New home lab setup and using unraid for host OS

[EvolvedKiwi]

Im seeking guidance on how to go about building out my home lab and would really appreciate help.

 

A local company had decommissioned and was disposing of the following hardware which i've acquired (this equipment was in storage for 5+ years):

1 x IBM x3550 M4 (2 x E5 2620 v2 CPU, 128GB RAM)

2 x IBM x3550 M3 (2 x E5649, 96 GB RAM / E5 2620, 96GB RAM)

1 x IBM DS3524 Express Storage Unit - mix of 146GB/300GB/500GB/1TB SAS drives

1 x IBM EXP3524 Express Expansion Unit - mix of 146GB/300GB/500GB/1TB SAS drives

 

My background is in desktops (custom builds etc), software support and recently becoming a junior devops engineer at my place of work. I have not worked on server grade equipment before.

 

My final goal for this project is:

Plex server

large storage array

local kubernetes cluster

local docker

windows/linux vms

move my pi-hole, synology ds414 and qnap ts412 in with the server

look at getting a managed switch (currently just using basic tp-link switches)

 

I've tested all the x3550 servers and am able to access the bios, one of the server's had a bad ServeRAID M1115 raid card but the other 2 appear fine (one is a M1115 and the other a M5014). Im only planning on running the M4 at present until i need/want more compute (and a bigger power bill). I managed to create a driver update package for the M4 and upgrade it to the most recent firmware and am using IMM.

I've started the M4 using Unraid as it has native docker support, containerized Plex and a few other apps im interested in and this is where im starting to go sideways. I've been reading about cross-flashing the ServeRAID cards back to their LSI equivalent but have yet to figure out how to get the Express storage unit functioning and accessible through to the server first. The documentation i've read has left me a bit ???, from what i can work out, the express storage is configured with dual ESM and 1GB iSCSI host interface and the M4 has an expansion NIC.

 

Im trying to establish:

How to get the DS3524 configured and recognized? - i cant download IBM storage manger v10 as i dont have a service contract

Do i need to flash a raid card in the M4 if the sas drives can be converted to jbod off the raid controller?

For increase capacity, can i put 4TB samsung evo ssd's in the m4 directly? - i believe yes from my research

 

I've been reading the forums, servethehome guides, wiki.unraid and a few other places but am hoping for some guidance on where to go from here.

 

Thank you.