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Is ECC RAM a key component of a FreeNAS build?
- Thread starter roach9
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ZFS should always be implemented with ECC RAM. Many people will use ZFS without ECC RAM but it is not recommended. The level of redundancy (RAIDZ, RAIDZ-2, RAIDZ-3) that your pool is using has nothing to do with why you should use ECC RAM and the extra redundancy at that level will not help if errors do happen to the bits while in RAM.
My FreeNAS 8.0.3p1 server currently has 4 x 8GB DDR3 ECC RAM.
My FreeNAS 8.0.3p1 server currently has 4 x 8GB DDR3 ECC RAM.
It does not mean, that non-ecc ram leads to problems. ecc-ram just can detect & handle bit defects in memory automatically
while they most likely will stay undetected in non-ecc RAM - so it can corrupt after a while your data on the disk.
But not all mobo's support ecc ram (it is more expensive and consumer stuff is very price sensitive). On the server market
reliability is key and some k$-bucks more for ram does not count much compared to the rest.
In pro-environment you have redundant, hot-pluggable power supplies, redundant, hot-plugg and monitored fans, hot-plugged
high-speed / low density drives, ECC Ram, redundand network cards, ... and all this metall is clustered / mirrored and
distributed in different locations to mitigate risks on total loss of data or service by fire, air plane crashes etc.
With this setups, you can even upgrade the OS on a running clustered system.
All this you will more likely not find in home-set ups.
while they most likely will stay undetected in non-ecc RAM - so it can corrupt after a while your data on the disk.
But not all mobo's support ecc ram (it is more expensive and consumer stuff is very price sensitive). On the server market
reliability is key and some k$-bucks more for ram does not count much compared to the rest.
In pro-environment you have redundant, hot-pluggable power supplies, redundant, hot-plugg and monitored fans, hot-plugged
high-speed / low density drives, ECC Ram, redundand network cards, ... and all this metall is clustered / mirrored and
distributed in different locations to mitigate risks on total loss of data or service by fire, air plane crashes etc.
With this setups, you can even upgrade the OS on a running clustered system.
All this you will more likely not find in home-set ups.
That mirrors my thoughts on ECC.
Though I'm absolutely no expert in FreeNAS, I find it very unlikely that high quality consumer non-ECC RAM will make much difference to a home use scenario, especially one that is storing mostly videos and photos.
Far more important places to spend money would be things like an uninterruptable power supply or higher quality motherboard.
If you're using consumer hard drives, consumer motherboards, consumer NICs and PSUs, why the mandate for enterprise level RAM?
As I said before. It depends on your needs. freeNAS can be used for production environments and the underlying system is by design "induastrial grade" in terms of security (freeBSD - linux, unix and all those base more or less on that OS design pattern), redundancy (zfs file system with error detection / correction, raid1, raidz, raidz2, raidz3, duplicated copies of a single file, remote sync to offsite storage, snapshots to rollback changes, massive volumes spanning tons of drives - zetabyte file system!). This is developed for very large data-center and not mainly for home use video libraries.
Because it is now open source any one has access to this high-tech stuff, and yes - you can store media files on it. But it is much more than just a tiny cheap consumer NAS. Giving it the right hardware you can run serious business on it. iSCSI, link aggregation and thos stuff is also very unlikely to be found in consumer setups - it is more data center - server cluster gear.
Because it is now open source any one has access to this high-tech stuff, and yes - you can store media files on it. But it is much more than just a tiny cheap consumer NAS. Giving it the right hardware you can run serious business on it. iSCSI, link aggregation and thos stuff is also very unlikely to be found in consumer setups - it is more data center - server cluster gear.
If someone is really itching for ECC RAM, then they'll already be purchasing a Xeon-based server with ECC support and the enterprise options that go with it.
A home user can get away with non-ECC RAM and survive quite nicely. This all comes down to the frequency of possible bit errors with the volume of data going to it. If we all got a used server from work with unlimited ECC RAM, great... but the used decommissioned personal PC with a bunch of ports also works.
Personally, I would never use a FreeNAS server in a production IT environment without ECC, redundant PSs, ZFS, redundant network and offsite... but not every home user can afford it or really needs it. Heck, backup the FreeNAS onto BD-ROM... IMHO, RAID is not a backup.
Mind you, I've seen companies that consider RAID as the final storage location for medical images... HAHA
A home user can get away with non-ECC RAM and survive quite nicely. This all comes down to the frequency of possible bit errors with the volume of data going to it. If we all got a used server from work with unlimited ECC RAM, great... but the used decommissioned personal PC with a bunch of ports also works.
Personally, I would never use a FreeNAS server in a production IT environment without ECC, redundant PSs, ZFS, redundant network and offsite... but not every home user can afford it or really needs it. Heck, backup the FreeNAS onto BD-ROM... IMHO, RAID is not a backup.
Mind you, I've seen companies that consider RAID as the final storage location for medical images... HAHA
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