ProLiant Servers - Netservers
1748149 Members
3650 Online
108758 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

 
SOLVED
Go to solution
paulgear
Esteemed Contributor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

It still mystifies me why HP thinks

  1. that fake RAID will be better than the tried and tested software RAID systems available on Linux md, ZFS, etc., and
  2. that they can expect Linux users to use binary drivers on production servers.

Both of these have been tried before by various companies with very poor results.

Regards,
Paul
snapperdg
New Member

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

As for the answer you received from 1st level support, you can always ask to speak to a supervisor and/or ask for your case to be escalated to 2nd level support.  For this particular issue you can ask the support person to contact me internally.

 

I opened a case with "support" and they said there was no problem. I then asked them to refer to second line support and quoted both this thread and Jimmys name and second line "support" also said there was no problem and it was working as designed. Looks like they couldn't be bothered to look at this thread or refer to Jimmy.

 

First time with a HP product and probably the last...

 

 

 

 

PAC_
Frequent Advisor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

Latest support case updates:

 

 

Comment added: 11/12/2013 12:00:58 PM
Pending confirmation from thermal engineer if an updated fan table was provided to the BIOS team.

Comment added: 11/5/2013 12:06:05 PM
Engineering states this is a driver related issue, however some tuning can be done at the BIOS level, but there are no plans in the future for that.

subsix
Frequent Advisor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

Quick update: I installed a H220 HBA in my Microserver and although not officially supported it seems like that configuration will work with Solaris/SmartOS at an acceptable noise level. With the 4 drive bay connected to that controller I made an interesting observation:

 

- With two WD RED drives (3.5") I get approx 30% fan speed in idle. No "HD-Max" showing up in iLO.

- With the two WD REDs and a genuine HP disk I get around 10% fan speed and an active "HD-Max" sensor.

- A 2.5" HGST enterprise disk (in the ODD bay) connected to the second SAS controller port results in 50% fan speed!

 

Definitely a noticeable difference and possibly a reason to consider at least one genuine HP drive in the install...

 

No further feedback from HP support regarding my case...

bobbozzo
New Member

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

Mine does it in AHCI mode with no disks installed (booting VMWare from a flash drive).

 

I'm not convinced that HP drives are required, and even if they are, that is ridiculous.

 

third_eye
Occasional Visitor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

Hey,

I have the same problem with my gen8 microserver. I am using Debian Wheezy with disks in AHCI mode (with self compiled kernel 3.11). I get as well about 30% of fan speed in idle (wonder what that will be in summer time with slightly higher room temperatures). I will open up a support case.

 

The noise is really annoying and like that the server is not usable as a home server I would say. I will try to get a genuine HP disk and see if this helps (as it was written here before).

 

I wonder if previous generations of the microserver where that noisy as well...

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

Hi, I have had a couple of the previos genreration. I also use Debian and have not had any problems with the older ones. I have had them on my desk while my new Gen8 one hardly can be in the same room.

 

  /Marcus

third_eye
Occasional Visitor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

So I had a call with the HP support regarding the ticket I created. I was informed that the microserver is only 100% compatible with HP hard drives and that other disks might work, but there could be smaller issues (like this fan speed issue). The support said that he is quite sure that the problem would not arise with genuine HP disks. But as HP disks are much more expensive then the WD red disks I have I decided to sell my microserver and go for a self build system. I can say that this was the first and last time that I bought a HP system.

subsix
Frequent Advisor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

@third_eye,

 

I was close to that decision myself but with the H220 and one HP disk (in addition to two WD REDs) installed my Microserver is now at 9-10% fan speed consistently. Not a cheap workaround (that I had to discover myself) and clearly not what I had expected from HP!!! Unfortunately there's a lack of real alternatives in that particular market segment.

 

From what I read elsewhere today HP is still losing customers... that's quite a natural reaction when you stop looking at the business from your customer's perspective...

 

Peter

paulgear
Esteemed Contributor

Re: MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

Interesting developments, folks.  Can anyone point me to a list of supported drives, or which genuine drives you've used that have had the desired effect?  An H220 HBA is almost as expensive as the whole server, but if I can find the smallest, cheapest genuine drive, that might be a more cost-effective solution.

Regards,
Paul