Dell Poweredge R410: Power management control

BlizzardX · 26 Apr 2015 at 00:45

Hi,

I've just picked up a R410 with an X5550, iDRAC Enterprise and redundant PSU (plus perc 6/I) for dirt cheap here in NZ. Whilst it will be in a rack and well away from living areas in my house it sounds like a jet engine at all times, apart from momentarily on boot when it actual doesn't sound at all bad. I'm just about to do a full update on the firmwares as they're all out of date so I hope that might fix some of the issues.

My question is this: What is the best power management mode for running ESXi on so that the fans reduce to their lowest setting? Also, I've read that removing the perc may reduce the speed of fan #4 so will try that and get a SAS 6/r to replace it as I do not have any sata power cables for this unit.

Any pointers greatly received.

Chris

BlizzardX · 26 Apr 2015 at 06:31

So I did a full update which didn't seem to help except allow me to update the iDRAC system to the latest version.

So I removed the PERC. While this means I now cannot access any HDDs as I cannot power the drives, it did reduce all the fan rpms down to a more tolerable level. So the question is now they're at just below 7000 rpm, is there anyway to get them lower?

Next question, what is the cheapest way to get the HDDs back without reinstalling the Perc? They're not in a raid so plug and play is fine...

BlizzardX · 26 Apr 2015 at 11:47

Hi Matthab & Thanks.

So, yes there are power profiles. I've currently got it set to OS control, not sure if that is the best option though.

Out of curiosity, do you know what RPM your fans are at? I suppose the R420 is more energy efficient which will likely mean lower fan speeds anyway.

Taking out the PERC card has really made a difference, as I said above it has halved the RPMs across all the fans, I'd like to be able to reduce it further if I can.

BlizzardX · 26 Apr 2015 at 20:58

Hi Matthab,

Yeah I know, I've generally got supermicros in use but this was a steal at about 50 quid from an online auction. Even though the tech is older, to build something as complete as this would have cost me a lot more... It will be a stepping stone until I'm ready and it uses the same power as my FX6100 powered host but is much more efficient and has IMPI!

BlizzardX · 26 Apr 2015 at 21:27

Wow the server accepts unbuffered non-ecc ram! didn't expect that at all, can just populate it using what I have in the FX machine rather than having to purchase more ram to bring it back up to 32GB!

BlizzardX · 29 Apr 2015 at 09:20

Nutcase, did you have a perc 6/I in that R410?

BlizzardX · 29 Apr 2015 at 21:11

LizardKing said:
How many HDD's do you have connected? ours are nosier when they are full of drives. Not massively but its definetly noticable!

1u are never going to be quiet mind, noise levels are pretty low on the agenda when it comes to designing these things

Might be worth trying the Dell customised copies of Esxi, they have a few more tweaks than the vanilla builds.

I haven't, currently got a usb stick with esxi and running datastore from an iSCSI device.

Yeah I know they're never going to be quiet, they're a compact high density system designed for data centre work but at the price I couldn't resist plus it had the X5550.

Once removed the perc that was in the x16 slot, it reduced in volume by loads as the rpm had been cut in half, should be a lot quieter once its in its special rack in a cooler environment than the middle of the house.

For my needs its perfect, would have prefered the 2u 610(?) I think with more pci-e slots but 2 x xeon cpu capacity and at least 64gb ram support with remote management is great!