As a result of another piece of work – relating to 64 BIT guests on ESX4i on a Poweredge T610 here an interested chat was had with Dell support.
When the change had been made – I noted that the server fans appeared noisier that before. After kicking off two server vm installs I had left the server location – only to return to find the fans running at what sounding like full pelt !!
Call Dell and explained the change I made to bios setting to enable 64 bit support – and the fact that the fans kicked in immediately than the machine was booted (not when the hypervisor loaded). The support engineer asked – how loud is the noise. I said – you know the sound when a plane is ready to go down the runway and they are speaking to the tower to get final clearance and the engines get fully wound up and they are just about to release the brakes. That loud !!
So loud you couldn’t have a conversation standing beside it. So loud that you moved slightly away in case it might disintegrate ? That loud.
The suggest was to turn the virtualisation setting back to what it was. Did that – no difference. The startup was as described above. Deafening!
In the end I investigate the bios settings and with trial and error found that the power settings could be tweaked from the Maximum Performance option to something less than “Trusters at Full Power – Scotty” bring an air of normality back to the server room. Some additional repositioning of the server to improve airflow and the hum is almost back where it was. More of a whisper jet than an afterburner ?
So T610 – you are cleared for takoff – have a nice flight !