Foreign cards in a HP server, do they cause the server to operate outside of specs?

Question

I have a Proliant DL380 G7 I am going to be staging as lab server. As part of the server I plan to run ZFS as the base filesystem and installed 2 LSI 9211-8i cards for the disk controllers since the smart array controller cannot do JBOD.

The one thing I noticed is the fans getting louder and revving higher than before. Some people were telling me that this is becasue the cards are not HP cards and the system does not know the temp of the cards so it just runs high RPMs to compensate for the unknown hardware.

However I thought about it a bit and realize my baseline is the system without the cards or the power demand. So I am thinking this is the system revving the fans higher to meet the power draw demands from the new cards.

Does anyone know if this is the case? Is HP doing something to their servers or is my belief right and nothing is wrong?

Answer 1

I've built plenty of servers like this; HP DL300-series, LSI controllers and ZFS.

I don't even bother anymore, though. The JBOD nature of ZFS will be a disadvantage for you since you'll need to also have software RAID for the OS, no real write cache and need to dedicate a couple of disks for boot. (Sometimes it's okay to use hardware RAID for ZFS...)

To your real question, having the LSI cards in the server will impact the thermal configuration. By default, the fans will run at a higher speed. You may be able to offset this if you're running a "supported" OS capable of installing the HP Health agents (RHEL/CentOS/SuSE). If not, you'll have to live with it.

Here are the vitals for an HP ProLiant DL380 G6 with 2 x LSI 9211-8i controllers, CentOS 6.7, 16 x 2.5" disks, including ZIL and L2ARC SSDs.

[root@nas1 ~]# uname -a
Linux nas1 2.6.32-573.12.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 15 21:19:08 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[root@nas1 ~]# hplog -t -f

ID     TYPE        LOCATION      STATUS  REDUNDANT FAN SPEED
 1  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 13)
 2  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 54)
 3  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 54)
 4  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 46)
 5  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 43)
 6  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 43)


ID     TYPE        LOCATION      STATUS    CURRENT  THRESHOLD
 1  Basic Sensor Ambient         Normal    62F/ 17C 105F/ 41C
 2  Basic Sensor Processor Zone  Normal   104F/ 40C 179F/ 82C
 3  Basic Sensor Processor Zone  Normal   104F/ 40C 179F/ 82C
 4  Basic Sensor Memory Board    Normal    86F/ 30C 188F/ 87C
 5  Basic Sensor Memory Board    Normal    89F/ 32C 188F/ 87C
 6  Basic Sensor Memory Board    Normal    82F/ 28C 188F/ 87C
 7  Basic Sensor Memory Board    Normal    82F/ 28C 188F/ 87C

For reference, the same type of server without the LSI cards shows the following. Note the difference in fan speed:

[root@Coast ~]# hplog  -f
ID     TYPE        LOCATION      STATUS  REDUNDANT FAN SPEED
 1  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 13)
 2  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 20)
 3  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 23)
 4  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 20)
 5  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 13)
 6  Var. Speed   System Board    Normal     Yes     Normal   ( 13)