Noise problem DL360 G3

[Robert Cashman · Accepted solution]

Hi there,
I'm the product manager in EMEA for the ProLiant DL360 G3 and we are very much aware of the fan noise concerns. We are addressing this issue and will provide the following fix to address these concerns:

A ROM update will be available in ~2 weeks that will enable fan speed control on the DL360 G3. An ambient room temperature of 25 degrees C or lower will result in the slowest fan speed. The ROM will allow the health driver to adjust the fan speed of the power supply and processor fans accordingly up to the maximum supported ambient room temperature of 35 degrees C.

I hope this will now be a satisfactory solution for our customers, please feel free to respond with any additional comments.

[Darren Webb]

Could anybody tell me if this is a problem on any other servers, because I just turned on a new ML370 G2 and it seems to be very noisey indeed. Almost as if.... the fans were stuck on!

[Tom Mucha_1]

Darren- depending what firmware your G2 is at, the default fan speed (can be changed in RBU - F9 at boot) is set to high. If the OS you are using has the CPQ health drivers installed, it will throttle down the fan untill the temperature changes. If your OS does not support the health driver, you can set it to LOW during boot in the advanced menu I believe.

[Michael Golod]

When I turn the DL 360 server on for the first time, people came to my room to ask why I am using vacuum cleaner on the morning :-)Compaq managed to put such a power to this machine's fans, so if you connect a pair of wings to it's case - I think it will fly away.
What about our ears??? Am I need to purchase some headphones or, you guys in Compaq, really plan to do something about this problem?
Mr. Robert Cashman, thank you for your response, but for some reason local suppliers (at least here in Israel) still say that this behavior of DL 360 is "normal".

Best regards.

[Nicolas Florange]

We experienced also the same noise problem even if the QuickSpecs specifies 59dBA of acoustic noise in normal operating mode (we supposed that 80dBa would be a better approximation of the noise). Our customer wishes to replace DL360G3 servers with other servers! We asked him to wait for a fixe, but we really hope that HP will provide a free hardware or software fixe as soon as possible!

[Marco da Silva_1]

The solution to this problem can be find at this link :

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/17306.html

After the application of this patch, we can sleep quoted a DL360 G3...

[Stein Waalen]

Thanx to Compqaq for providing the patch. Updated the SystemROM yesterday and the imediate result was almost deafening :-)..........a sigh of relief went through a bunch of co-workers! Thanx to everybody who supported this issue, and this forum entry.....keep up the good work everyone !

[Theo Hill_1]

One thing to be aware of is the risk of overheating. Hopefully people don't think it is ok to just throw these under a desk now in normal tempetures.

[Brian_166]

I have installed the latest DL360 G3 ROM (P31 from 2003/02/07, released 2003/02/20), and I have the health driver loaded. The fans are still running at full speed and full volume. cpqimlview doesn't give any informational messages about fan speed being adjusted.

[Doug Ortman]

I installed the patch and after a reboot, the fans immediately throttled down to a slower speed, even before I applied the health agent.
This is an educated guess, but there's probably a temperature sensor in there somewhere. If your fans are still running on high speed, maybe your environment is still too hot. Do you have good air flow around the server?