T630 fan control

Question

Hi all,

I have a T630 that's running a little warm. The system itself is fine. The ambient of the room it's in tends to hover around 23-25c, and at this temp the CPUs are generally in the 34-42c range under typical load, no problem.
The issue is with my hard drive array. Some of them are running kinda toasty, over 50c whenever they get loaded a bit.
This isn't super terrible, since these drives are rated for a higher temp than typical drives, but I still would like to keep them cooler than that.

Anyway, my question is about the fans. In iDRAC, I have the the Thermal Profile set to 'Maximum Performance' and the minimum fan speed set to 15% PWM, but the fans don't seem to be ramping up under load. I suspect it's because the system isn't watching the HDD temps for some reason.

If I set the Fan Speed Offset to "Low", it kicks the fans up quite a bit and things cool down, but then I have the howling beast to content with, since even the "low" setting sets the fans to about 55%.

Is there a way to get the system to watch the drive temps, and vary the fan speeds like it should, without turning my office into a wind tunnel?

Thanks for any advice.

DELL-Shine K · Answer

Can you check whether you have latest BIOS and iDRAC FW installed on the server? IF not can you update to latest and check the behavior?

Is the drives used in the server is from Dell and supported by the server. Sometime we seen such behavior when not supported drives are used in the server.

Elmojomo · Answer

The server is on BIOS version 2.15.0, FW version 2.83.83.83. I believe these are the latest available.

The drives are HGST HUS726040AL4210, and were not obtained from Dell, as this machine is not under support at this time. I have no idea if they are "supported drives" or not, nor how to check that. I don't see any entry in iDRAC for temperature monitoring of HDDs. Perhaps I'm not looking in the correct place.

Elmojomo · Answer

Hello? Anyone?

DELL-Charles R · Answer

Hello Elmojomo,

What Shine was saying is correct. We cannot assure how a non-Dell part will perform. Typically the fans would be kicked up to high since the DRAC cannot manage the non-Dell part.

We have the Profile setting and Offsets are the controls available to you to adjust cooling.

Modifying thermal settings using iDRAC web interface

https://dell.to/3G5X3K4

Viewing historical temperature data

https://dell.to/3NSU6hO

Elmojomo · Answer

I don't understand. Dell doesn't manufacture hard drives, and the drives sold by Dell don't contain any additional sensors that other drives do not, to my knowledge. The iDRAC doesn't show any error, or any entry for monitoring of drive temperatures at all. Would it normally be monitoring such things if these were 'Dell' drives? I think I have a couple of those laying around. If I plug one in, will it begin monitoring the temp of that drive, and adjusting the fan speeds accordingly?

DELL-Charles R · Answer

Hello Elmojomo,

Dell labeled drives have Dell Firmware.

You mentioned the temp wasn't super terrible and now you're looking to optimize , with non-Dell part. We don't do optimization but you can use the DRAC to try different custom thermal settings to find one to your liking that isn't too loud and maintains an acceptable temperature.

Elmojomo · Answer

I didn't know that about the firmware, thanks for the info.
I'm trying to get the server to look at the temps of the hard drives and adjust the fan speeds accordingly. A couple drives are getting warm under certain workloads, and the system is just ignoring it, since the CPU is staying cool.

I've tried the various thermal profiles in iDRAC, and none of them have any effect, for the above-mentioned reason. If there was a way to just set the fans to a fixed speed manually, that would be okay I guess, but there doesn't seem to be. The only option I see is the fan offset setting, which starts at 55%. That's WAY too much, and sounds like a tiny jet trying to take off in my office. lol
I tried setting the PWM minimum, but that only affected the 2 'system' fans, not the main drive cooling fans.

PowerEdge Hardware General

T630 fan control

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