Dell EMC VEP 4600 high fan speed

[michael-kaplan]

I recently got a Dell EMC VEP 4600 and noticed the fans run a little too fast. Is anyone experiencing something similar. I saw couple units that were "normal with fans around 6k, but mine seems stuck with fans fans at 12k-14k rpms when the cpu tems is ~33C. It seems a little too excessive to me. Dell support seems to think this is normal. Is my expectations out of hand? or is reasonable?

latest firmware,
ambient temp is ~25C

 

[jigawatt]

Can I ask what you are going to use the VEP4600 for? I come across these all the time with a wiped operating system. I’ve seen Versa SD-WAN installed on these but it can not be installed by an end user. Is there something I am not getting? I would love to be able to install maybe flexiwan on there? Just curious as to what tinkering or uses there are for this particular hardware? Thanks in advance!!

 

[michael-kaplan]

I think the main use for it is network infra. I run vyos(VyOS – Open source router and firewall platform) on it.

as for the installation. you can install pretty much anything if you have an iso(I think pxe is also supported).
you can just dd the iso to a usb drive, plug it in, connect over serial(or ipmi serial) and install.

just note they have pretty weird fan curve(In my home environment they tend to run fans at high speed(which I have solved with a manual override through diagos from dell(which I run as a docker container)

 

[oneplane]

Those RPMs are indeed normal, but they can be modified. It depends a bit on the controller used, but if they are visible on the SuperIO chip you can do it there, otherwise they are controlled via the CPLD which requires some I2C writes.

Check with lm-sensors first, if you can read them that way, you are likely going to be able to write them there too. I don't remember if the rack units have IPMI, you could check dmesg to verify.

 

[michael-kaplan]

mine has a CPLD. They do have IPMI, but it is not a standard dell server one(and lm-sensors don't work with that/don't detect rpms)

I haven't been able to figure out what i2c bits need to be changed and how, so I gave up on that(and just built a container out of the diagos and set it there via fantool. That somehow talks to ipmi, but haven't had time, nor the mood to try to reverse it.)

I'll probably replace it soon, with something arm64 based and opensource(I'm currently eying turis omnia enterprise, but it hasn't been released yet)