Best practice tips for DL380Gen10 fan speed

[George Vardikos]

Hello,

We have some DL380Gen10 servers with 2x Xeon Gold 6242 CPUs each. These servers came with 256GB RAM (8x32GB) preinstalled from the HPE distributor. The CPU fans were configured on "Optimal Cooling" setting. These are setup on our datacenter with 21oC standard temperature. Each of the server has 14 SSD drives (1.92TB to 3.84TB) and a Mellanox Infiniband card installed. They run ProxMox with Ceph storage, they serve around 100 VMs and the CPU utilization is at 13%-15%.

A few weeks ago we decided to update them to 512GB RAM (16x32GB). Since then, on the temperature sensors we see a small increase on the ambient temperature of the servers. The CPU fans operate at 11%-15% and we do not see them going higher. I believe the extra temperature has to do with the amount of RAM which is now occupying the slots.

Should we change the fan speed to another setting? On the HPE website I see the following:

a. Optimal Cooling — Provides the most efficient solution by configuring fan speeds to the minimum required to provide adequate cooling.
b. Increased Cooling — Operates fans at a higher speed.
c. Maximum Cooling — Provides the maximum cooling available for the system.

What is the setting you use for this amount of memory? Would another setting (which would make the fans operate constantly at 30%-60%) shorten the lifespan of the fan modules?

[parnassus]

Hi, I would say that modifying the cooling options is only advised for server configurations that differ from typical Hewlett Packard Enterprise-supported configurations that cannot be cooled adequately via the "Optimal Cooling" settings.

See HPE ProLiant Gen10 Server Extended Ambient Temperature Guidelines (Edition 7, June 2020)  for relationshipt between "HPE Supported Configurations" and "Standard operating support".

It's reasonable to think that, as many moving obiects, the higher a fan rotates...the earlier it wears out (on equal terms).

[George Vardikos]

Thank you for your reply. The P/N of the servers is 868704-B21. These are DL380Gen10 24SFF CTO servers, this type of chassis (24SFF) shows only "High Performance Fans" on the document you supplied, does this mean that these servers have high performance fans? What is the difference with the normal fans? How can I verify what fans are installed?

Also, based on the configuration I gave on my initial post, would you leave it to "Optimal cooling" setting?

[hshrib]

Hello 

With regad to you query, 

The 12 LFF and 24 SFF chassis ship with 6 High performance fans as standard.
https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00008180enw

High-performance fans Support
24SFF, 24SFF + 4 or 6 SFF HDDs in the rear limited to30°C inlet ambient temperature

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=a00026969en_us

Please update Innovation Engine Firmware 0.2.2.0(or later), this address the system fans may be running faster than expected along with iLO to version 2.15 (or later)
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/km/product/1010026819/HPE-ProLiant-DL380-Gen10-Server-Models?ismnp=0&l5oid=1010026818#t=DriversandSoftware&sort=relevancy&layout=table&numberOfResults=25&f:@kmswsoftwaretypekey=[swt8000029]&f:@kmswtargetproductbaseenvironmentlatest=[1010026819_A%20OS%20Independent]&hpe=1