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PowerEdge Product Group

Direct from

Development

PowerEdge MX7000 Acoustical Options

Tech Note by:

Paul Waters

Victor Chen

Amrita Maguire

SUMMARY

For the majority of PowerEdge

MX7000 deployments, the

acoustical experience meets

customer expectations.

For customers deploying

MX7000 in noise-sensitive

areas, a three-pillar strategy can

help reduce the acoustical noise

output.

These pillars are: Configuration

selection; Software settings; and

Acoustical hardware.

Today’s server market is a challenging place to build quieter servers. Virtually

every new generation of components require more power to drive incredible

new features. Increased power means increased heat generation, stimulating

increased airflow to achieve required cooling. For technology-dense data center

products like the Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000, increasing fan speed is the

prescribed approach to deliver new features, though it comes with some

acoustical output tradeoffs.

Leveraging the new efficient thermal design of the MX7000

, the acoustical

design of MX7000 fits well within the Dell EMC metrics for standard unattended

modular data center products. However, Dell EMC acoustical engineers are

aware of unique permanent or temporary applications where customers show

increased acoustical noise sensitivity. For these applications, Dell EMC

recommends a three-pillar strategy to achieve the desired level of noise for your

application:

 Configuration selection;

 Software settings

 Acoustical hardware

Note: The MX7000 is not appropriate for office or general-use space

deployments with or without the following pillars.

Image 1: The PowerEdge MX7000 modular platform

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Direct from Development PowerEdge Product Group PowerEdge MX7000 Acoustical Options Tech Note by: Paul Waters Victor Chen Amrita Maguire SUMMARY For the majority of PowerEdge MX7000 deployments, the acoustical experience meets customer expectations. For customers deploying MX7000 in noise-sensitive areas, a three-pillar strategy can help reduce the acoustical noise output. These pillars are: Configuration selection; Software settings; and Acoustical hardware.
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Direct from Development Configuration Recommendations The most effective strategy for reducing acoustical output starts at the point of purchase. Though specific configuration recommendations are difficult to provide due to the wide range of workloads and applications that the MX7000 system supports, the following guidelines can be used to understand tradeoffs and optimize a system for a specific application space.
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Direct from Development PowerEdge Product Group Currently, sound cap must be enabled manually in each compute sled installed in an MX7000 chassis to be most effective. Sled reboot is required to enable or disable sound cap. Currently, sound cap can only be enabled in a sled iDRAC interface or in the BIOS options during sled boot up, sound cap cannot be enabled through MSM.