Disable Fan on Procurve 4204

[NOsmers]

My Procurve 4204vl (J8770A) has two big fans on left site of the chassis. Theses fans are very loud, as they run always with full power. Is there a way to reduce fan speed or disable the fans without any problems to the switch? I disconnected the cable to the fans, but then the fault LED is flashing and I have no idea, if the switch will get into trouble. There is another fan in the power supply.

The switch is located in one of our offices and the employees feel disturbed. Any ideas?

[paulgear]

Hi NOsmers,

Is one fan louder than the other?  If so, that may indicate a fault that you can raise as a hardware call with HP and get it replaced.

However, chassis-based switches really are meant for data rooms, not office environments.  If they're a big problem, you need to consider replacing them with more appropriate models.  This is quite difficult if you have a requirement for large numbers of gigabit desktop ports, because even a fixed-port switch like a 2810 or the like can be quite noisy.

Aside, to HP product development: I would really like to see HP come out with a model that can match a Juniper EX2200-C for noise, and beat it on port numbers, features, and price!  It should be Comware-based, have 16- and 24-port models, and come complete with routing licenses.  (Wishful thinking doesn't hurt every once in a while, right? :-)

[NOsmers]

Dear Paul,

thnx for your reply. Well, the switch is new (two years old, but remained as spare-part in the box till today). Both fans are identical. I need the chassis based one because of a gigabt fibre optic module. These part of the office is to far away from our main switch for copper cable. The old switch which should be replaced (Procuve 4000M J4121A) is very quiet in comparsion to the new one. I need 50 ports + 1 fibre optic port. Any ideas for a quiet switch?

Without the fans the 4204 became very hot, so i connected them again.

Niels

[paulgear]

Hi Niels,

You definitely shouldn't disconnect any fans in your switch.  That would void any warranty support you would get from HP.

I would look at one of the 48-port switches like the 2810-48G, 2530-48G, or 2510G-48 - have a look at the possibilities at the switch selector tool: http://h17007.www1.hp.com/au/en/products/switches/selector/

[tikutaku]

I'm having this same issue, and not very much help from HP support. They keep saying the specified noise levels for the fans are 64,5 dB but I keep measuring around 77 dB from all the chassis they keep sending me. None of them are suitable for daily use.

We bought this switch to replace the 10 year old 4104gl at our customers premises, and I simply expected to get a similar product, not a howling monster that keeps annoying our customers 24/7.

There are three things that I simply can't understand about this issue:

1) There are thermal sensors on the 4204vl's fans, but they aren't utilized. Why would you mount these completely oversized industrial grade fans to a switch and then ignore the possibility to control their speeds by temperature? Sounds like very poor or hasty design to me.

2) The ten year old 4104gl has practically silent fans. How can you design a similar new product that is so much worse and then keep telling your customers it's a feature.

3) The fan unit is modular like the rest of the case. Why can't HP ship a different fan unit with better fans, since they seem to replaceable even by the unit in 4104gl???

I've spent hours and hours to get this minor problem solved, but all HP can do is to persuade me to buying another HP product to replace this 3-month old costly thing. No thanks, I think this is the final HP networking product we'll ever sell...