topic Re: HP ML350e increased fan speed & noise while using 3rd party RAID controllers in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

HP ML350e increased fan speed & noise while using 3rd party RAID controllers

kamkoc — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 16:23:23 GMT

Hi,

Is it supported to use 3rd party RAID controllers on HP ML350e without enjoying 3-4 times louder fan speeds??????

The problem occur for my HP ML350e Gen 8 - I searched online for other people having similar problem and it seems that the whole HP Gen8 series is affected...

The moment you try to stop using onboard B120i RAID controller and switch to PCI Express one, let's say Adaptec, fans start working faster (30%) and generate considerably louder sound.

HP, are you planning to fix this problem!? It's ridiculous that we can't use other manufacturer's RAID controllers and still enjoy quieter runtime of ml350e gen8 servers......

Re: HP ML350e increased fan speed & noise while using 3rd party RAID controllers

Casper42 — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 04:57:41 GMT

I beleive (not 100% sure) that this stems from the fact that with Gen8 HP started having their Option Card OEMs add Temperature sensors and make them accessible in some standard way. So if you buy an HP version of a Broadcom NIC for instance, it had this temp sensor and can detect temp of the card and adjust the fans accordingly.

When you install a 3rd party card that has no such HP Temp interface, the server really has no idea if that cart is melting down or not. So it increases the fans in that zone to a higher level to compensate.

Not sure if this will be "fixed" because I'm not sure it's considered a problem.

But I will ping the guy who "owns" the ML server line at HP and see what he thinks.

Out of curiosity, what kind of Adaptec Card is this? Was there no HP card that met your needs or you are just trying to keep costs as low as possible?

Re: HP ML350e increased fan speed & noise while using 3rd party RAID controllers

Casper42 — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 07:30:06 GMT

OK so I asked 2 people internally.
One of them said my description of the reason for the fan loudness was correct.

The Product Manager for the ML asked me to relay the following test/request:
Update to latest SPP
Reseat fans one by one
Reseat fan cage
Repower.
This should help with the fan speed issue.
Please let me know if it works.

So give that a try if possible and report back.