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FX2s/FC630 iDRAC 2.70.70.70 fan speed behavior
I have a FX2s chassis that currently has three FC630 blades installed. All are running current firmware except for the iDRAC until yesterday. I upgraded the iDRACs in all servers to 2.70.70.70, and a while later, I noticed that the chassis was noisier than usual. When I looked at the CMC, I found that all fans were at 50%, which didn't seem right.
I reverted all iDRACs to 2.63.60.61 and after everything re-initialized and the CMC brought the fan speeds down, they settled in at 20% and stayed that way.
I re-upgraded the iDRACs again this morning to confirm the behavior and saw the same exact thing. After the upgrade to 2.70, chassis fans at 50%. After reverting to 2.63, they settled in at 20%.
Any ideas why 2.70 is causing the chassis fans to run at 50% when they don't need to be running that high?
DELL-Daniel My
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November 15th, 2019 11:00
Hello
Hardware profiling can change with iDRAC/LCC updates. It is not something that is typically mentioned in the release notes. I would make sure all hardware is up to date.
I doubt this will make a difference, but you can look at the third party fan response setting. Third party fan response will typically cause the minimum fan speeds to go higher than what you are experiencing, so I don't think the fan increase is related. You can try changing the setting though. There is also a fan speed offset setting. Fan speed offset allows you to increase the minimum fan speed. I doubt either of those settings will change anything, it sounds like a profile change with the firmware.
http://www.dell.com/idracmanuals/
The ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse is covered on page 263 of the RACADM CLI guide. I think it can only be modified via command line.
Thanks
Subnet_Mask
31 Posts
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November 15th, 2019 13:00
I'll take a look at that when I have a minute. I don't have the fan offset enabled in the CMC, so I doubt it's that. More likely you're right and it's a profile change in the firmware, which is not cool and would certainly stop me from running 2.70. Some explanation from 'those in the know' would be nice... There is no reason to up the fan speeds from 20% to 50% when the servers and chassis have been quite happy running at 20%.
Sam23000
6 Posts
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November 25th, 2019 04:00
I can confirm this feature in 2.70.70.70.
I have multiple PowerEdges and all do the same, fan speed rise from 20% to 50%. No other changes made than iDRAC fw update.
Subnet_Mask
31 Posts
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November 25th, 2019 07:00
Is this not just the blade enclosures like the FX2/FX2s, but all poweredge servers, including the 'R' and 'T' servers as well?
jasonfz
2 Posts
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December 12th, 2019 13:00
I can confirm that I see this same behavior in T430 (tower config), reverting to prior iDRAC firmware returns fan speeds to normal. This appears to be a bug.
proteuss
5 Posts
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December 12th, 2019 22:00
I did manage once to get the fans at normal speed with latest firmware after randomly changing fan settings and profiles in idrac but after removing power on the server the problem came back. After 2 hours of trying to replicate the fix I gave up and reverting to old firmware....
Subnet_Mask
31 Posts
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December 13th, 2019 15:00
I reverted back to the previous version too - hopefully Dell will come out with something to address this 'behavior'.
jasonfz
2 Posts
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December 13th, 2019 22:00
I tried changing the setting System.ThermalSettings.ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse (it was set = 1, changed to = 0) but there was no difference.
Fans are running at 60% regardless of whether the server is under load or not. Changing the thermal profile to Minimum power brings them down to a constant 40%.
A downgrade of the iDRAC resolves the fan issue but creates another problem at boot where the UEFI secure boot is out of sync with BIOS, worked with support for a while today and their solution is to replace the motherboard. Seems a little ridiculous that a mobo replacement is needed for what is obviously a iDRAC FW issue. Hoping more people will see and report this so it can be fixed.
crdillon
1 Message
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December 15th, 2019 20:00
I have just encountered the same abnormal fan behavior on a T330 after upgrading to iDRAC8 2.70.70.70, and changing the power profile and fan speed offsets had no effect (except to make it worse, depending on the setting). After rollback to 2.63.60.1, fan speeds went back to normal.
Grupo Simon
1 Message
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January 14th, 2020 04:00
Same issue with Poweredge R230. After the upgrade (2.70.70.70) the minimum fan speed at idle is 50% (messing with system/thermal profiles doesn't change the idle fan speed) whereas if I downgrade to (2.63.60.61) the minimum fan speed at idle returns to normal (22%). But now every time I need to reboot the server i got this iDRAC error "UEFI0315" regarding the secure key (even though secure boot is disabled), though resuming boot order (F1) the system boots normaly. With the new iDRAC FW the error at boot does not occur, system boots normaly.
CamL2020
3 Posts
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January 14th, 2020 08:00
Same here on our R630's. This is most likely because we have non Dell branded Intel NIC's that arnt reporting back to iDRAC, and the thermal profile has changed increasing the fan speeds. You should see a message in the system logs identifying that you have a third party card and that iDRAC has changed the response of the fans. We dont have this issue on other servers that dont have third party cards in it with 2.70.70.
I have tried disabling the ThirdPartyPCIe fan response setting. It does lower the speed of the fans, but they are still higher than with response on in iDRAC 2.63.60. I also get the Secure Keys message after downgrading (but only on BIOS 2.11). Dell needs to fix this!
Its almost as if iDRAC is ignoring the thermal profile setting. We have ours set to Minimum Power. I have yet to try changing this to a different setting and then back again, perhaps when i get some time.
The only solution is to downgrade back to iDRAC 2.63 or replace your "Third Party" component.
Subnet_Mask
31 Posts
0
January 14th, 2020 14:00
Interesting find - that could be related in some cases, but in my case, two of my FC630's, the ones running VMWare, have no addon cards of any kind, Just the Dell Quad port 10Gb NIC and Dell PCIe bridge for the FX2s chassis. One has two Dell 12Gbps HBAs. The only one that could apply to is my backup/BlueIris server, which has an 'unknown' dual port Broadcom PCIe NIC and a dual 8Gbps FC HBA that may or may not be Dell. In my case, it doesn't matter which server gets upgraded, the increased fan speed applies. Unless somehow the iDRAC in 'Slot 1' knows something about the PCIe cards attached to 'Slot 3' and is doing something with the fans because of that...
CamL2020
3 Posts
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January 15th, 2020 08:00
The easiest way to check is to look at your Lifecycle log for this event:
CamL2020
3 Posts
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January 27th, 2020 14:00
I tried different temperature profiles in iDRAC for the fans - nothing changes. It goes from being 23% of max (PWM) to 53% of max after upgrading to 2.70! Disabling ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse lowers it only to 48% of max, still way too high!
This can happen not only with NIC's, but any third party device that iDRAC doesnt have a thermal profile for, such as disk drives, video cards, etc.
Dell, can you please fix your firmware and go back to the thermal profile that was in 2.63?? I am not sure why this even happened, since iDRAC is monitoring the exhaust temperature, which isnt even anywhere near close to the max value. Why do you have to increase the fan speed to more than double what it was under the previous firmware!?
Subnet_Mask
31 Posts
1
January 27th, 2020 18:00
Cam, agreed - if no hardware has changed and the only change has been a firmware update, I can't see why the fan speeds need to change so much.