MicroServer Gen8 is noisy

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For anyone still interested I briefly used the recent hot weather to get some more readings:

Ambient:            Fan speed (ilo 1.32 'adjusted' actual results):

30                          18%
31                          21%

Didn't bother flashing the server back to the 1.40 ilo to give a comparison.

[DannyBiker]

My Gen8 is running Proxmix (not in AHCI or Legacy, I specifally avoided those modes to avoid fan noise)...and of course, Proxmox being Debian-based and not officially supported, I get a constant noisy 30 to 40% in iLO. I'm at the latest of everything I guess (flashed the latest Service Pack, updated the iLO firmware)...but nothing helped.

So was this ever fixed officially or is there a workaround ? Whether it's flashing a firmware, activating something through the command line in Proxmox or using a modified firmware (which can't be found anywhere anyway), I don't care. I just don't want to have to rebuilt my all setup just for this.

Thank you ! :)

[Jimmy Vance]

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@DannyBiker wrote:

My Gen8 is running Proxmix (not in AHCI or Legacy, I specifally avoided those modes to avoid fan noise)

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So what mode are you running in? B120i? Without the 'hpvsa' driver you're basically in AHCI mode.

If you install the latest System ROM and iLO firmware the fan should run around 13-17%

Right now the system sitting next to me has an ambient inlet temp of 24c and the fan is at 14% the controller is set to AHCI

System ROM 06/06/2014

iLO v2.20

[DannyBiker]

Yes, B120i. I'm running the latest iLO (2.20, right ?) as for the firmware, I'm at 11/09/2013. I never understood how to update it. Through Intelligent Provisioning, I'm said to be up to date. And on the HP websites...well ,you know how they are, you can't find anything.

As for the hpvsa driver, is it something activated through a HP update or through a Proxmox/Debian command ?

Thanks for the help.

[Jimmy Vance]

B120i RAID reqiures a driver that doesn't ship with any Linux distribution. The driver is available for several Red Hat and SUSE Enterprise Linux versions.  The 'hpvsa' driver provides the RAID stack for the controller, without the driver the controller is operating as an AHCI SATA controller.

Updating the system ROM to 06/06/2014 will reduce your fan speed

It's not that hard to get navigate to the ROM, Here is a link to the latest ROM 

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=5390291&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=4144

{Admin:Above link is no longer valid]

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/km/search#q=B120i%20RAID%20driver%20MicroServer%20Gen8&t=All&sort=relevancy&numberOfResults=25

(Yes it's for Ubuntu, but it's the same file across OS's)

This is a self extracting Windows file, once you extract the files, you can either create the USB key with the included utility, or use the iLO web interface to update the ROM. The ROM filename is CPQJ0612.CC6

[DannyBiker]

Thank you Jimmy, the 06.06.2014 system ROM did reduce the average fan speed to 19%, from 33%. 

I guess I have to check the hpvsa driver for Debian/Proxmox.

[subsix]

Danny, as Jimmy explained already:

"B120i RAID reqiures a driver that doesn't ship with any Linux distribution. The driver is available for several Red Hat and SUSE Enterprise Linux versions. The 'hpvsa' driver provides the RAID stack for the controller, without the driver the controller is operating as an AHCI SATA controller."

In addition to the above there's an "unofficial" Ubuntu driver available at: <https://launchpad.net/~hp-iss-team/+archive/ubuntu/hp-storage>

But I am not aware of any Debian hpvsa driver. With that OS you might have to live with the B120i in AHCI mode...

Honestly speaking, this is what I do today... and with the latest ROM and iLO firmware the noise isn't that bad anymore (IMHO)...

Best regards,

Peter

[D1Vad]

Thanks to everyone posting in these forums!! I am using my Gen8 as a HTPC and constant 50% fan speed was killing me. I thought it might have been the added PCIe card (Asus 5450 passive) but lucky it wasn’t. It was the very old 160GB 2.5” hdd in the ODD slot. I think HD-Max sensor was reporting 50C as it couldn’t read temp from the drive, now HD-Max = 35C

6-14% fan speed depending on ambient

- Bay5 ODD - 120gb Samsung EVO 840

- Bay1 – 3TB WD Red

- B120i RAID mode

- Win10 Pro

- Asus 5450 Passvie

- G1610T, 4GB Ram

- Bios – 2014.06.06

- iLO4 Firmware- 2.22

[scorpio2k222]

Just updated my server:

Now I have:

17-19% fan speed depending on ambient

- LSI Megaraid sas9220-8i with

-4 HDD x 3TB in front

-2 HDD x 1TB

-1 HDD 300GB SAS 10Krpm for OS

- Centos 6

- G1610T

- *GB Ram

- Bios – 2014.06.06

- iLO4 Firmware- 2.22

[MrR0bot]

Hi All,

After many nights of reading and going through this topic and on other sites as well I have finally fixed the high fan speed issue, here is how I did it.

Issue: Running 3 HDD (1 x raid0 & 2 x raid1) via onboard raid controller, as soon as the OS is booted up fan is on 70%

I had tried pretty much all the ROM's and ILO firmware and none seemed to work. I could get the fan sitting down to 7% with only 1 SSD drive in bay 1. Eventually after many tests and researching I found out it was the HDD's that I was using causing the fans to go so high. Being in IT I have access to many different model HDD's so I play around with different models and i found out after researching the WD Blue drives I was using don’t have proper temp sensors in them! I found this out on a Mac forum that users were complaining their fans on the iMac were going full blast due to the board not being able to detect the actual temp, of course this was the case on the gen8 as well!! Wacked in 2 new Seagate drives which and configured raid1 and what do you know, dead silence!!!!! Running at 8% fan level now....

So please try other hard drive brands that have actual temp sensors in them, I wasn’t able to find the approved list of HDD for the gen8 either so I had to play around and guess.

Happy to answer any questions to help anyone else having issues.