Noisy MD1200 - advice on troubleshooting

Question

I bought an MD1200 - a 12 bay 3.5in direct attached storage device - with the intention of using it to hold disks for a freeNAS server. The MD1200 is attached to an R720 rack server with the freeNAS machine virtualised under VmWare. The two are connected using an LSI HBA PCI card which provides JBOD access to the disks in the MD1200. FreeNAS doesn't like RAID controllers like the Dell Perc cards. So it works, but the MD1200 is way noisy. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this situation because I see three possibilities:

MD1200 is just a noisy piece of gear
The MD1200 is upset because it's not hanging off a Perc card, or,
The MD1200 is upset because currently not all of its 12 bays are full.

As things sit I'm not sure I can put up with so much noise but it does seem to me like the fans are all running at full - indicating a 'fault' of some nature. All status lights are happy (power supply, interface units and front panel) and there's no console to interrogate on the MD1200. I'm a bit stuck as to how to troubleshoot this and I don't have access to enough caddys to fill every slot. I'd buy these if I knew the MD1200 was a keeper but I don't want to buy more if the gear ends up getting discarded.

Thanks for any thoughts.

DELL-Sam L · Answer

Hello Willo_in_melb,

Do you have all slots filled with either drives or drive blanks? If your fans are spinning at full speed and you have open slots on the front of your system, then that is one main reason that your fans can spin at full speed.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Willo_in_melb · Answer

Thnaks @DELL-Sam L

I have had some slots open at the front - I will address that and get back you you. Many thanks for your contribution.

ps Do you know how the unit knows that some slots are open? I couldn't see an electrical connection to check. Pressure??

Willo_in_melb · Answer

I've now obtained enough caddies to fill all the slot on the MD1200 but the unit remains noisy. My next thought on troubleshooting is to run it temporarily on a perc H800 card on an old R710. This will be an entirely Dell setup and I hope it will give me more troubleshooting guidance. Will report back.

Willo_in_melb · Answer

I'm still not getting far on trouble shooting my MD1200. Using an app on my phone to measure sound levels at about 1m from my rack, the R720 produces 40dB, the R710 produces 50 dB and the MD1200 produces 56dB. That's really loud and I guess corresponds to use of a good amount of electricity.

I've had the MD1200 hanging off an H800 card in the R710 server. Unfortunately there is still a lack of troubleshooting data. The MD1200 seems to be running the fans in both power supplies at 100%. All the lights on the device are green (except the blue one which is blue) and using the PERC configuration utility (Ctrl-R on boot) I get no errors or signs of trouble.

I'm a little stuck as to where to go next - which leads me to the serial port. I wonder if there's a config remaining from some prior user. This appears to be designed for Dell staff only, but perhaps its the only way left to reset any old legacy config.

Any thoughts are welcome.

DellEMCSupport · Answer

Hello Willo_in_melb,

Are you using both power supplies or just one? Your configuration is stored on your PERC that is connected to your MD1200 as well as drives 0-3. If you erase the drives and the configuration on the PERC & reboot both your MD & your host then you have reset the system. Have you tried to upgrade the firmware on the EMM’s?

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

royroyroy · Answer

If your fans are running at 100% that would be insane.  The dB is like 60-70 or something insane.  You have to manually control the fan using a special cable on the MD1200 plugged into a serial port.  I have to use a script to manually set the fan speed to 20% every second to it to keep it quiet.  See this thread: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/fun-with-an-md1200-md1220-sc200-sc220.27487/

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Noisy MD1200 - advice on troubleshooting

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