Dell Poweredge r720xd - any reason to go to latest BIOS?

cyclone3d

[H]F Junkie
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Working on setting up a Dell Poweredge r720xd for local backup and ftp server.

Any reason for me to update to any BIOS after the last one that doesn't have the performance killing security patches?

Edit: I updated to 2.5.4 which is the last before they started doing all the "security patches".

That let me install the e5-2630 v2 CPUs I had bought for it.

Unless I hear some compelling reason to update to a newer version, this is the one it will be staying at.
 
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is noise an issue?
is security an issue?
Its best practice to update to the latest firmware of everything to ensure everything hardware wise is patched, that said some of the recent bios idle the fans super loud.
If you dont care, its super easy to update them over idrac enterprise or with a boot iso from their all inclusive package: https://www.dell.com/support/home/d...DG9MR&oscode=naa&productcode=poweredge-R720xd
Gives you all the latest idrac/backpane/bios etc updates in one go easy peasy
 
I ended up fully updating it. VMware ESXi was complaining about security issues.

The fans do run at 37% at idle (close to 7k rpm). I used an IPMI tool to manually set the fan speed as the iDRAC on this doesn't have the ability to modify the needed parameters to make a custom fan speed set up.
 
I ended up fully updating it. VMware ESXi was complaining about security issues.

The fans do run at 37% at idle (close to 7k rpm). I used an IPMI tool to manually set the fan speed as the iDRAC on this doesn't have the ability to modify the needed parameters to make a custom fan speed set up.
Its gonna do that due to the chip spectre/meltdown vulnerability, you either have to disable hyper threading or accept that risk (you can turn off the warning).
We decided to accept the risk at work as it wasn't acceptable to cut the thread count workload capability for internal servers.
 
Its gonna do that due to the chip spectre/meltdown vulnerability, you either have to disable hyper threading or accept that risk (you can turn off the warning).
We decided to accept the risk at work as it wasn't acceptable to cut the thread count workload capability for internal servers.
I just exited out of the warning after updating the BIOS and firmware and it hasn't come back after rebooting the server.

HT disabling is not happening.
 
I just exited out of the warning after updating the BIOS and firmware and it hasn't come back after rebooting the server.

HT disabling is not happening.
https://www.servethehome.com/foresh...irtual-machines-l1-cache-and-hyper-threading/
In virtualized multi-tenant systems there is a major implication. Although there is a L1 cache flush patch available for hypervisors, it also means that a major mitigation step is to turn off Intel Hyper-Threading. We regularly see a 30% improvement on many of our workloads in the STH lab with Hyper-Threading so turning off the feature can have an enormous negative impact on performance.
Just FYI.
 
I ended up fully updating it. VMware ESXi was complaining about security issues.

The fans do run at 37% at idle (close to 7k rpm). I used an IPMI tool to manually set the fan speed as the iDRAC on this doesn't have the ability to modify the needed parameters to make a custom fan speed set up.
Not sure how similar the R720 is to the R710 in this case, but I wrote some custom software the runs on boot that controls the fan via IPMI, but uses the readings from the CPU (motherboard) to do the control logic (it just triggers off of the highest reading it gets, I have one core that runs hotter than the rest for some reason). Made my server much more bearable. It now idles at around 1800rpm instead of 3k+ that it was. It's also written so that if it ever gets a fault signal, it automatically switches back to auto mode just for my piece of mind, but I haven't had any issues as of yet (over a year now of running). If you are interested, we could run a quick test to see if it would could/would work for you.
 
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