Quieting a Dell R710
I have a Dell R710 rev. II that I use in my home office lab homelab running ESXi 6.5. The R710 sits in my office where we work from home. Normally the hum of the R710 fans isn’t terribly bothersome - the 5 fans it houses run at around 3,800 RPM each. The noise is definitely noticeable so I did a little bit of digging into ways I could quiet it down. After looking into replacing the fans with quieter ones I found that I could override the system control of the fans and silence them that way. While I have to monitor the onboard temperatures more closely when disabled, I’ve found little downside to doing so when I’m in there. Here’s how to do it:
The commands used below assume default username / password of root / calvin. Hopefully you’ve changed the default password so substitute yours where applicable.
Step 1: Connect to the R710 iDrac using IPMI
1 | brew install ipmitool |
I’m using OS X on a MacBook Pro for this example, but ipmitool is available for linux as RPMs, PKGs, etc.
Step 2: Verify we can connect using IPMi
1 | ipmitool -H 192.168.0.X -U root -P calvin -I lan chassis power status |
If you get this result it means you can successfully connect to your R710’s iDrac
Step 3: Disable system control of the fans
1 | ipmitool -H 192.168.0.50 -U root -P calvin raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00 |
Disabling this doesn’t cause any alerts or errors.
Step 4: Turn down the fan speed
1 | ipmitool -H 192.168.0.50 -U root -P calvin raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x02 |
You should hear the fans spin down to a nice quiet 1,300 RPMs.
If you want to revert back to system control of the fans simply run this:
1 | ipmitool -H 192.168.0.50 -U root -P calvin raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x01 |
These commands do not persist after a reboot, so you’ll have to add them to a cron job or run them manually at system startup.
Use these commands at your own risk. There is no harm in running them but don’t complain to me if they cause your toenails fall off or something.
Quieting a Dell R710
