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.
System Tree Selection | Tab | Subtab | User Privileges | |
View | Manage | |||
Main System Chassis | NA | |||
Fans | Properties | Fan Probes | U, P, A | P, A |
U=User; P=Power User; A=Administrator; NA=Not Applicable. For more details on user privilege levels, see "Privilege Levels in the Server Administrator GUI."
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NOTE: The fields listed on this page cover possible configurations. Some features may not be present on your system. |
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:
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. |
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. See "Event Type Definitions and Component Health" for more information on status and related concepts.
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 | |
(Blank) | Unknown |
Some fan probe fields differ according to the type of firmware that your system has: BMC or ESM.
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NOTE: The fields listed on this page cover possible configurations. |
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NOTE: For some probes, the value for Reading is "Good" or "Bad" rather than an editable, numeric value. |
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NOTE: Some threshold values are not
editable on BMC-based systems.
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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. |
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."
Prints a copy of the open window to your default printer. |
Export | Saves a text file containing the contents of this window (the values of each data field separated by a customizable delimiter) to a destination you specify. |
E-mails the contents of this window to your designated recipient. See the Server Administrator User's Guide for instructions about configuring your Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server. | |
Refresh | Redraws the screen. |