Dell OpenManage Help

Fan Probes Information

The operation of various system components generates heat. Maintaining an appropriate operating temperature inside the system chassis is therefore critical. Fans are one component that help with temperature control.

Some fan probes monitor fan status by measuring fan RPM. Other fan probes report an ON or OFF status for a particular fan. Fan probes report the RPM or ON/OFF status to the Server Administrator instrumentation service. When you select Fans from the device tree, details appear in the data area on the right-hand side of the Server Administrator window.

NOTE: On servers installed in Dell PowerEdge FX2 series chassis, when Chassis Management at Server Mode is None, then Server Administrator does not display the Fan details.

User Privileges

SelectionView Manage
Fan Probes Information User, Power User, Administrator Power User, Administrator
NOTE: For more details on user privilege levels, see Privilege Levels In The Server Administrator GUI.

Fan Redundancy

Systems can be designed with redundant fans to prevent system shutdown due to fan failure. When fans are present in a system, being able to see that one or two fans have failed enables administrators to replace fans and restore redundancy before the last fan failure causes the entire system to fail.

NOTE: The fields listed on this page cover possible configurations. Some features may not be present on your system.
Redundancy Status Status can be Full, Degraded, or Lost. If the number of fans in a system that is required for full redundancy is three, then:
  • Redundancy status is Full when three fans are working.
  • Redundancy status is Degraded when two fans are working.
  • Redundancy status is Lost when one fan is working.
Full redundancy is defined by system specification. Degraded redundancy means that one or more of the extra fans is not working in the normal range. Lost redundancy means that there are no backup fans available to take over for the minimum number required, but at least one fan is working.

Critical/Failure status would describe a system that had no working fan, and redundancy is designed to make this sort of system failure unlikely.

Number of Devices Required for Full Redundancy Your system has a number of fans defined for full redundancy. If the number of fans required for Full redundancy is three, redundancy is degraded when two fans are working, and lost when only one fan is working.

Fan Status Information

Critical components have an event type associated with them at all times. Status is a shorthand term for the component's event type. Status can be given for a component's operational state as well as for its redundancy state, if applicable. For more information on status and related concepts, see Event Type Definitions And Component Health.

Some fan probes monitor fan status by measuring fan RPM. Other fan probes report an ON or OFF status for a particular fan. When you select Fans from the device tree, details appear in the data area in the right-hand side of the Server Administrator window. Fan status is one of the following states:

ok Normal/OK
non
critical Warning/Noncritical
Critical Critical/Nonrecoverable
unknown Unknown

Fan Probe Fields

Some fan probe fields differ according to the type of firmware that your system has: BMC or ESM.

NOTE: The fields listed on this page cover possible configurations.
NOTE: For some probes, the value for Reading is Good or Bad rather than an editable, numeric value.
NOTE: Some threshold values are not editable on BMC-based systems.
Status Displays whether the event type for the probe is Normal/OK, Warning/Noncritical, or Failure/Nonrecoverable.
Probe Name Displays the alphanumeric text that uniquely identifies a fan probe; for example, CPU Fan, or BMC FAN 1A.
Reading Displays a snapshot of a fan RPM measured by the probe at a given time.
Minimum Warning Threshold Displays the lowest acceptable fan RPM that is recommended for system operation. Values that fall below this RPM level result in warning events.
Maximum Warning Threshold Displays the highest acceptable fan RPM that is recommended for system operation. Values that exceed this fan RPM result in warning events.
Minimum Failure Threshold Displays the lowest acceptable fan RPM that is required for system operation. Values that fall below this fan RPM result in critical/failure events.
Maximum Failure Threshold Displays the highest acceptable fan RPM that is required for system operation. Values that exceed this fan RPM result in critical/failure events.

Managing Fan Probes

For information on how to set warning thresholds for fan probes, see Edit Fan Probes.

For information on how to set alert actions for fan probes, see Set Alert Actions.

NOTE: Due to the limitations of the VMware ESXi operating system, the Setting Alert Actions feature is not available with this release of Server Administrator.

For an explanation of other buttons present on Server Administrator Action pages, see Server Administrator Window Buttons.