Cheapest NAS With ECC RAM

[00Roush]

Based on the Wiki it looks like it might even be recommended to use 2GB per TB with deduplication. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

From searching it looks like FreeBSD does support dedup in the later versions. The Wiki page actually has a chart of the different OSes and the ZFS versions. I believe anything higher than version 21 supports dedup. A cache drive can be used for dedup as well but it is still much slower than the actual ram.

00Roush

 

[rektide]

this thread is awesome. ECC should be available on more cheap SoC platforms!

 

[nullack]

Hi folks, so I was asked to give feedback on SteveCH's post and I'm doing it in this thread.

Many components of an x86 machine are in fact protected with ECC algorithms out of the box. The CPU cache has ECC (all Intel chips do), a HDD has ECC (even consumer ones), professional grade graphics card have ECC for GPGPU computing, hardware raid HBAs have ECC etcetc. Its wrong to suggest that by designing a file server for ECC RAM that there is other *key* components of the hardware architecture which are prone to bit flip failure.

Having a 24/7 file server without ECC RAM for data that needs to remain uncorrupted is just dumb. Sorry, but to think otherwise is irrational as the science of the issues are clear. Storage leaders like EMC know this all too well and my experience with those who claim otherwise do so out of either ignorance of the science or bigotry.

If on the other hand, that the nature of the data being stored means that if corruption did set in that its no big deal, well great dont worry about the hardware's integrity mechanisms.

There is also a bunch of software based protection mechanisms that find themselves featured in things like ZFS and BTRFS but this isnt the subject of this thread where were looking at hardware.

 

[coxhaus]

I am a firm believer in ECC ram and it benefits but I am an old IT guy. In the old days there were many more RAM issues back then. I also think there is a difference in motherboards which are just as important. Intel builds server level motherboards and desktop motherboards. There is also is a price difference probably for a reason. I run several old Intel S5000PSL S5000SATA Xeon motherboards with low voltage Xeons (40 watt). Older generation Intel motherboards become dirt cheap when the next generation comes out. I bought a L5240 Xeon for $10 off eBay. It is a dual processor low power 40 watt 3 GHz chip with 6meg cache. I would think this kind of equipment would be perfect for home server or NAS server duties. The motherboards only run ECC ram so it would meet your requirements and still be cheap. Part of your problem may well be a not so well thought out motherboard designed for desktop service. I believe in buying server motherboards for server duties.