Non-ECC RAM okay just for a few months?

[redking]

So, I got 64gb of non-ecc ram in my system, and the reason for that is simply that I didnt know what the difference was when I bought it. But after reading cyberjock's post on "ECC vs non-ECC RAM and ZFS", I now know bether.

The issue now is simply that money is tight, and it will most likly be a couple of months before I can afford to do any more upgrades. The ram I use now is DDR4 2133mhz, its about 6months old, and memtest shows no issues.

so the question is, is the non-ecc ram issue likly to break my zfs system in the span of about 2 months?

 

[Ericloewe]

It'll probably be fine, but you won't have much of a way to be sure.

 

[redking]

It'll probably be fine, but you won't have much of a way to be sure.

Thanks for the reply! Will be doing weekly backups of everything and daily backups of everything important to USB drives atleast for the first year so im gonne risk it. but maby hold off on the owncloud storage untill I have ecc so no important pictures or something goes lost

 

[DrKK]

Thanks for the reply! Will be doing weekly backups of everything and daily backups of everything important to USB drives atleast for the first year so im gonne risk it. but maby hold off on the owncloud storage untill I have ecc so no important pictures or something goes lost

Sir,

My concern would be: Are you sure your hardware *SUPPORTS* ECC RAM? You can't just toss-in ECC RAM. The CPU *and* the motherboard chipset have to support it. In many cases, a board that will even take non-ECC RAM won't take ECC RAM, and vice versa. If you are unsure, let us know your motherboard model and CPU.

Also, for the record, the "ECC issue" is a jihad issue. There are very deep experts that say ECC is an absolute must for FreeNAS. And there are very deep experts that say it is not. Everyone agrees, of course, that it is certainly "better" to have ECC RAM in a ZFS-based NAS. But, as to the magnitude of risk you are, in practical terms, taking, there is some debate there. We certainly have people running FreeNAS's for years and years with non-ECC RAM with no issues. What I'm saying, is I don't think you have to live your life with your pulse 10 BPM higher 24/7 because your NAS has non-ECC RAM. So, just take a breath :)

 

[DrKK]

That being said, I would never build a FreeNAS for someone that didn't have ECC RAM.

 

[redking]

Sir,

My concern would be: Are you sure your hardware *SUPPORTS* ECC RAM? You can't just toss-in ECC RAM. The CPU *and* the motherboard chipset have to support it. In many cases, a board that will even take non-ECC RAM won't take ECC RAM, and vice versa. If you are unsure, let us know your motherboard model and CPU.

Also, for the record, the "ECC issue" is a jihad issue. There are very deep experts that say ECC is an absolute must for FreeNAS. And there are very deep experts that say it is not. Everyone agrees, of course, that it is certainly "better" to have ECC RAM in a ZFS-based NAS. But, as to the magnitude of risk you are, in practical terms, taking, there is some debate there. We certainly have people running FreeNAS's for years and years with non-ECC RAM with no issues. What I'm saying, is I don't think you have to live your life with your pulse 10 BPM higher 24/7 because your NAS has non-ECC RAM. So, just take a breath :)

Thanks for the reply! after reading some of the posts on the forum I suddenly had a feeling that it was almost a guarantee that my system would be raped at some point without it ^^

Really hope my hardware supports ECC tho, would kinda suck quite a lot if not :( My motherboard is "Asus x99-a", and my cpu is "Intel i7-5820k 6-core"

 

[Ericloewe]

Really hope my hardware supports ECC tho, would kinda suck quite allot if not :( My motherboard is "Asus x99-a", and my cpu is "Intel i7-5820k 6-core"

It doesn't. But it's also overkill and you might be able to sell it for more than a proper server would cost.

 

[Robert Smith]

Is it OK to go without medical insurance for a few months? Sure, you will just get bankrupt if you end up in a hospital though, because they charge $7000 per band-id there.

Edit: Just noticed the OP is form Norway. So much for my analogy... LOL

 

[cyberjock]

Neither that motherboard chipset, nor that CPU support ECC RAM. So you're looking at buying quite a few things if you want ECC functions on your FreeNAS.

ECC is a seatbelt. Do you wear your seatbelt *every single time* you drive? If you forgot one time, is it likely to end badly for you? What if that one time you forgot you also happened to be in an accident on the highway? It's all about "how lucky you feel".

 

[DrKK]

So, it's a good thing I asked, eh :)

Yes sir, the i5, and the i7 CPU, themselves, REGARDLESS of what motherboard they are put in, do not have ECC memory channels.

And in any case, that motherboard does not have ECC memory support, as others have said, even if you had a CPU that supported it.

Also, LOL at Robert Smith's comment.

 

[Ericloewe]

Neither that motherboard chipset

X99 is claimed by some motherboard manufacturers to not impede ECC (which makes sense), unlike Pxx/Zxx/Hxx/Qxx chipsets (where it's artificial).

I hope to test that soon...

 

[cyberjock]

X99 is claimed by some motherboard manufacturers to not impede ECC (which makes sense), unlike Pxx/Zxx/Hxx/Qxx chipsets (where it's artificial).

I hope to test that soon...

I'll believe it when I see it. THis would be a MAJOR, MAJOR change for how Intel does business. Or a mistake on their part for not disabling ECC. ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

I'll believe it when I see it. THis would be a MAJOR, MAJOR change for how Intel does business. Or a mistake on their part for not disabling ECC. ;)

Well, it apparently worked back in the X58 days, so maybe they just don't care in this market segment.

 

[Robert Smith]

Bios support is also needed. The hardware could be throwing ECC errors, but you need somewhere to go to configure what to do about them, and to see the log.

 

[Linkman]

I"m a relative newbie, but I'd argue that while FreeNAS / ZFS with ECC is the best route (and that's the route I went), having FreeNAS / ZFS without ECC is still safer than any other NAS solution without ECC, and most (all?) of the others don't have ECC. So you're still safer than using Unraid or OMV or some such.

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS / ZFS without ECC is still safer than any other NAS solution without ECC, and most (all?) of the others don't have ECC. So you're still safer than using Unraid or OMV or some such.

I'd tend to agree that ZFS without ECC is better than any other filesystem (with the possible exception of btrfs) without ECC, but I don't understand your reference to Unraid/OMV/etc. Those run on commodity PC hardware as well, and can take advantage of ECC just as FreeNAS can.

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not sure if I share the same sentiment. I really am conflicted in my opinion, here's why:

ZFS is a "go/no-go" file system (not for 100%, but seems to be more often than not). Either there is no corruption and the zpool mounts without a problem, or there is corruption and the zpool will not mount at all.

Also consider that most of the forum users here do NOT keep backups.

So if you are using non-ECC RAM, and things go bad and you end up with corruption, there's a good possibility you'll be locked out of your data. This is likely to be a "forever" scenario since there are no ZFS recovery tools available and ZFS recovery costs are outrageously expensive. So for you and me, if a zpool cannot mount on its own, our data is gone forever.

If you are using something like NTFS, ext4, or a whole host of other file systems that are more prevalent, you generally *do* have recovery tools (and lots of them to choose from) and you have relatively cost effective ways to get much/most of your data back.

So all things considered, corruption in RAM is devastating to your data in a ZFS system (loss of everything) , while with NTFS only some of your data will be lost. I'd rather stick with NTFS in that scenario and hope to get a large portion of my data back. :P

 

[redking]

X99 is claimed by some motherboard manufacturers to not impede ECC (which makes sense), unlike Pxx/Zxx/Hxx/Qxx chipsets (where it's artificial).

I hope to test that soon...

With this, do u mean that the Intels i7 prosessors on the x99 chipset is supposed to support ecc? that would be pretty cool, but cant find anything when trying to google that tho :(

So, it's a good thing I asked, eh :)

Yes sir, the i5, and the i7 CPU, themselves, REGARDLESS of what motherboard they are put in, do not have ECC memory channels.

And in any case, that motherboard does not have ECC memory support, as others have said, even if you had a CPU that supported it.

Also, LOL at Robert Smith's comment.

Do u know about how much I would have to spend for a decent ZFS box? would be for one raidz2 with 3tb drives starting at 6 disks, and one raid 10 with 500gb SSDs starting at 4 disks

I was planning on doing the FreeNAS in a VM with pci passthrough but I guess I might aswell consider having my fileserver in a seperat box

 

[Robert Smith]

I"m a relative newbie, but I'd argue that while FreeNAS / ZFS with ECC is the best route (and that's the route I went), having FreeNAS / ZFS without ECC is still safer than any other NAS solution without ECC, and most (all?) of the others don't have ECC. So you're still safer than using Unraid or OMV or some such.

Other file systems do not use memory much, ZFS will gobble anything you can throw at it, up to 128 GB and probably then some.

Memory under heavy load is more prone to errors than lightly loaded memory.

 

[Ericloewe]

Intels i7 prosessors

The i7s do not. You would still need a Xeon E5. And a new motherboard, most likely.