Fan RPM threshold in vsphere 6.5?

So I have a new vsphere server. It's in a full-ATX case, with 4 case fans (front, back, top and door). All but the front fan are large (140mm) and run relatively slowly (700 RPM - this is by design - the supermicro IPMI thinks this is fine - these all show up as green status). Unfortunately, 700 RPM seems to be 'too low' for ESXi, as the health information shows those 3 fans as low non-critical.) I've been looking like crazy online, but I can't seem to find anywhere that you can adjust these thresholds. Any tips appreciated

 

I thought it pulled this thresholds from either the BMC or bios.

 

So did I, but when I go to the IPMI sensors page, all 6 fans show a green block to the left of the fan name, and the status shows as 'Normal'. If vsphere 6.5 had an ipmitool installed, I'd double-check there, but it doesn't

 

Vmware pulls the fan sensor from BMC/IPMI CIM.

You can set the lower non-critical threshold using ipmitool. For example:

Code:

$ ipmitool -I lanplus -U ADMIN -H 192.168.1.2 sensor thresh FAN1
Password:
sensor thresh <id> <threshold> <setting>
   id        : name of the sensor for which threshold is to be set
   threshold : which threshold to set
                 unr = upper non-recoverable
                 ucr = upper critical
                 unc = upper non-critical
                 lnc = lower non-critical
                 lcr = lower critical
                 lnr = lower non-recoverable
   setting   : the value to set the threshold to

sensor thresh <id> lower <lnr> <lcr> <lnc>
   Set all lower thresholds at the same time

sensor thresh <id> upper <unc> <ucr> <unr>
   Set all upper thresholds at the same time

This post has some examples.

 

I'm very confused now. I saw a button in the sensors screen in the IPMI web page. When I enable showing thresholds, it shows Low NR as 300 and Low CT as 500. The 3 fans in question are spinning at 700. Sadly, the page doesn't seem to show the Low non-crit - I'm guessing it's above 700 My 6.5 install doesn't seem to have ipmitool, and the one I get on a typical linux distro doesn't seem to want to talk to my SM motherboard

 

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/utility/IPMICFG/

the linux version should run on esx (meaning the slightly older version i use works fine, have not tested that newer release)

 

Subscribing. I have a system I can try this on later tonight.

 

Strange the ipmitool is not recognizing your SM Board. (Perhaps, the BMC firmware needs update ?) I'm not doing anything anything special to get ipmitool. On Unbuntu 17.04:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ipmitool
$ sudo modprobe ipmi_devintf

 

It's some weird SM thing. I found a statically linked ipmitool some guy on github ginned up - it seems to work. Digging into it now...

 

That did the trick! All green now. Thanks guys! I dunno why the IPMI sensors page was showing normal status, but whatever...

 

Woot!

 

I also noticed that my SM IPMI Web UI (X10DRG-Q motherboard), does not show the Lower Non-Critical (
LNC) fan values. So, got curious, and looked at what the default value for lnc was for my motherboard.

Code:

ipmitool -I lan -U ADMIN -H 192.168.1.2 sensor get FAN1
Password:
Locating sensor record...
Sensor ID              : FAN1 (0x41)
 Entity ID             : 29.1
 Sensor Type (Threshold)  : Fan
 Sensor Reading        : 1700 (+/- 0) RPM
 Status                : ok
 Lower Non-Recoverable : 300.000
 Lower Critical        : 500.000
 Lower Non-Critical    : 700.000
 Upper Non-Critical    : 25300.000
 Upper Critical        : 25400.000
 Upper Non-Recoverable : 25500.000
 Positive Hysteresis   : Unspecified
 Negative Hysteresis   : Unspecified
 Assertion Events      :
 Assertions Enabled    : lcr- lnr- ucr+ unr+
 Deassertions Enabled  : lcr- lnr- ucr+ unr+

Looks like the LNC is right at 700 (atleast for my SM motherboard).

 

I just realized I was unclear on something earlier. When I said linux ipmitool wasn't working, I meant over the LAN. All kinds of weird error messages. Running it on the host itself might very well have worked, I dunno. Just glad it's good to go now. Thanks for the help, all...

 

I just checked. Same here lol...