SMEs, or businesses with limited space, sometimes struggle with the issue of where to put their crucial data center or IT equipment. While less cabling is required when servers or storage devices are placed close to a workstation, everyone must put up with loud fans and occasionally drives. Furthermore, it’s important not to underestimate this extra auditory tension.
Ultimately, the working environment at a data center differs from that of an office. Because of this, data center servers occasionally produce noise comparable to that of a strong vacuum. This is too loud for anyone near the server to tolerate for very long without experiencing a disruption in their ability to focus.
Small company owners who want to place their servers in a room where employees are working or individuals utilizing the device for a home lab should pay particular attention to server noise reduction.
Continue reading for tips and ideas on how you can reduce server noise.
How can you reduce server noise?
Relocation
Look for a place to put the servers, or construct one if needed. These days, walls may be quickly constructed using drywall, for example, to turn an alcove into a little room. Walls can also include noise insulation. As an alternative, rackmount servers can also be equipped with insulated racks that can absorb a significant amount of noise.
Ensure the server is in a place with good airflow
Remember that the fans are operating to cool the server components and move air around. The server’s sensors will detect whether the server is already in a cool environment, which will reduce the amount of effort required from the fans.
Maintenance
It is essential to ensure your servers are maintained and updated with genuine server parts. For a wide range of options, you can check out boosthardware.com. Under some conditions, fans with bearing damage or defective hard drives can also become extremely noisy. For optimal performance, the majority of settings automatically default to the highest cooling level.
However, you may adjust the parameters to be more effective if you are certain that the atmosphere is cool enough or that the server isn’t working too hard. This entails setting the Thermal Configuration to Optimal Cooling on HP servers via the BIOS menu and Low Fan Speed Offset on Dell servers via the iDRAC menu.
Firmware updates are constantly being released by manufacturers to optimize energy, cooling, and efficiency. Your server could be utilizing an antiquated method to decide how quickly to run its fans if the firmware hasn’t been updated.
If the fans on your computer seem to be always on overdrive—even when the system is supposed to be idle—this is typically an indication that something is not right. Typically, the culprits are either software problems or hardware problems. As you proceed, use simple troubleshooting techniques to ensure that all RAM and processors are positioned correctly. Additionally, there might be compatibility problems with any newly added components, like as RAM upgrades, RAID card installations, network card installations, or GPU installations.
Virtualize
Virtualization would also be a good choice if you already have a few servers in use; you could retire your physical servers and virtualize their functions. Your current servers might all be replaced with silent servers (emissions of less than 30 dB(A)) by turning them into virtual machines. After all, the number of physical servers in operation increases the amount of noise emissions.
An alternative would be to use a cloud solution, which would then be contracted out to a data center in a way that would tolerate noise. This kind of virtualization of server duties is possible with hybrid clouds or cloud equivalents.
Configure
In addition to the uptime and hard drive acoustic level, the majority of contemporary servers and workstations allow you to choose the cooling fan speeds.
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) can be used to regulate the speed of cooling fans. The noise level of a fan decreases with its speed. Cutting the fan RPMs to 50% can have a significant impact on a machine with a lot of fans.
You are in luck if your hard drives enable Advanced Acoustic Management (AAM) since this allows you to set the drive to read and write data with the least amount of noise. However, be mindful of the potential effects such settings may have on performance, as they may prioritize silence above read/write speed.
To ensure it works for you, you may wish to benchmark and do some experiments.
Additionally, you may set up your computers to spin down the disk drives after a predetermined period of inactivity. For example, TrueNAS gives you the option to select from six pre-established hard disk power usage settings.
You probably don’t need the cooling fans to be spinning constantly at maximum RPM if your workstation or server isn’t performing any intensive calculations and you operate in an air-conditioned environment.
The same reasoning holds true for servers with rotating hard drives from which you don’t always access or store data. One or more of the aforementioned programmable characteristics should be taken into consideration if you do not want those drives to spin constantly. For further information, see the handbook that came with your workstation or server.
Rebuild
It could be time to rebuild a few of your equipment with quiet or much less loud parts. You might want to think about getting a newer drive type with a lower decibel noise rating if you intend to increase the amount of storage you now have. Since SSD drives don’t have any moving or mechanical elements, they will not only provide you with maximum performance but also perfect quiet.
Another part you may replace is the passive CPU heatsink. Just make sure your case is operating in a temperature-controlled environment and has adequate ventilation.
Consideration should also be given to a quieter power supply unit. For workstations with up to Zero dB, several are available. Just be sure to choose the right form factor and wattage for your device.
