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.
User Privileges
Selection | View | Manage |
Fan Probes Information | User, Power User, Administrator | Power User, Administrator |
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.
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:
Critical/Failure status would describe a system that had no working fan, and redundancy is designed to make this sort of system failure unlikely. |
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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:
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Normal/OK |
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Warning/Noncritical |
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Critical/Nonrecoverable |
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Unknown |
Fan Probe Fields
Some fan probe fields differ according to the type of firmware that your system has: BMC or ESM.
Status | Displays whether the event type for the probe is Normal/OK, Warning/Noncritical, or Failure/Nonrecoverable. |
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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.