I will almost always say, the only place i would use non-ecc is functional test, no live data. I have only seen it happen probably 15-20 times in the last 10 years that i have been working with system with zfs. Probably 1000's of installs.. but when it happens, it really sucks. Whole pool unrecoverable. nothing you can do. restore from backup might not even work because the corruption could also live out there. I also would be really careful with the linux distros you use. the ubuntu's 13+ seem to be more stable.. I am on the zfs on linux list and probably once a month I see total pool failure or my datasets disappeared or some other problems in the subject(I will say i don't read every email) I hate to sound like a shill for freebsd.. but the zfs has been in there since 2005 and most of the holes have been plugged. ZFS on linux has been used at jpl that same amount of time, but the "mass consumption" of zol has been a shorter period of time. On 11/29/14, 10:29 AM, Andrew Berg wrote: > On 2014.11.29 09:06, Jeremy MountainJohnson wrote: >> That said, I attended last years presentation on ZFS, and have even >> played around a little with thumb drives and Linux on ZFS with no >> issues. The server supports ECC, however I already purchased the RAM >> for it as non-ECC and 16 gigs worth, so I'd hate to throw away that >> investment to purchase more expensive ECC. Is it worth considering >> even using ZFS on Linux with non-ECC? The presentation leaned toward >> no, and that is the general consensus I'm seeing on forums. So, >> perhaps stick to a software Linux raid6? > No. Didn't I just dispel this silly myth a week ago on this list? Memory > failure is going to ruin your day. It's that simple. Other software RAID > systems and filesystems are NOT going to make bad memory suddenly start giving > correct data again. In fact, they are mostly just going to hum along with > corrupt data, oblivious to the problem (depending on the severity of the issues > in RAM). ZFS has a fighting chance at saving some of your data, whereas others > don't. If you are that concerned, go buy ECC RAM. Linda isn't saying "don't use > ZFS", she's saying "do use ECC RAM". In the combination of bad RAM corrupting > your data and ZFS trying to save it, ZFS is not the problem. > >> Based on a lot of recent tests, I'll probably go with Western Digital >> drives for the cost savings and longevity, unless anyone has other >> suggestions? > I would suggest WD Reds unless performance is a big factor. Of "you can have > cheap, reliable, or fast, pick two", they are cheap and reliable. IIRC, WD > Blacks are good too, being reliable and fast. > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list