Users Guide

To view the health status of fans, in the CMC Web interface, do any of the following:

1. Go to Chassis Overview.

The Chassis Health page is displayed. The lower section of chassis graphics provides the left view of

the chassis and contains the health status of the fans. Fan health status is indicated by the overlay of

the fan sub-graphic. Move the cursor over the fan sub-graphic. The text hint provides additional

information about a fan. Click the fan subgraphic to view the fan information in the right pane.

2. Go to Chassis Overview → Fans.

The Fans Status page provides the status, speed measurements in revolutions per minute (RPMs),

and threshold values of the fans in the chassis. There can be one or more fans.

NOTE: In the event of a communication failure between CMC and the fan unit, CMC cannot

obtain or display the health status for the fan unit.

NOTE: The following message is displayed when both the fans are not present in the slots or if

a fan is rotating at a low speed:

Fan <number> is less than the lower critical threshold.

For more information, see the Online Help.

Configuring Fans

Fan Offset — A feature to provide increased cooling to the storage and PCIe regions of the chassis. This

feature allows you to increase the airflow delivery to the HDDs, Shared PERC controllers, and PCIe card

slots. An example usage of the Fan Offset is when you use high-power or custom PCIe cards that require

more cooling than normal. The Fan Offset feature has options of Off, Low, Medium, and High. These

settings correspond to a fan speed offset (increase) of 20%, 50%, and 100% of the maximum speed

respectively. There are also minimum speeds setup for each option, which are 35% for Low, 65% for

Medium, and 100% for High.

Using the Medium Fan Offset setting for example, increases the speed of fans 1–6 by 50% of its maximum

speed. The increase is above the speed already set by the system for cooling on the basis of installed

hardware configuration.

With any of the Fan Offset options enabled, the power consumption will be increased. The system will be

louder with the Low offset, noticeably louder with the Medium offset, and significantly louder with the

High offset. When the Fan Offset option is not enabled, the fan speeds will be reduced to the default

speeds required for system cooling for the installed hardware configuration.

To set the offset feature, go to Chassis Overview → Fans → Setup. On the Advanced Fan Configurations

page, in the Fan Configuration table, from the Value drop-down menu corresponding to Fan Offset,

select an option appropriately.

For more information about the Fan Offset feature, see the Online Help.

For setting up these features by using RACADM commands, user the following command:

racadm fanoffset [-s <off|low|medium|high>]

For more information about the fan offset-related RACADM commands, see the Chassis Management

Controller for PowerEdge VRTX RACADM Command Line Reference Guide available at dell.com/support/

Manuals.

Enhanced Cooling Mode (ECM) — Is a feature in the CMC that allows increased cooling capacity for the

servers installed within the PowerEdge VRTX chassis. Example uses for ECM are operation in a high

ambient environment or using servers with high power (≥120W) CPUs installed. The increased cooling

capacity is achieved by allowing the four chassis blower modules to run at a higher speed. As a result, the

system power consumption and noise level may be increased when ECM is enabled.