Bad build - where do I go now?

[SandLake]

Did some research for a Home Media Server and decided on a FreeNAS box, long story short I missed the instruction about using ECC ram. Entirely my fault, no-one else to blame but now that I have made that mistake what should I now do.

I was also running out of storage so I have backed up my data to external drives, changed to a JBOD configuration so I now have 4Tb. Built a backup FreeNAS server out of old parts and 2 new 3Tb drives and got rsync running between them (manually at present but my next step is automating rsync) so I do have some redundancy/backups in case anything goes wrong.

So, my question is, am I now OK as I have 2 (non-ECC ram) FreeNAS servers with rsync running - or - do I need to sooner rather than later get a new (ECC ram) server?

Through the natural order of things I guess I will be replacing my server somewhere down the line and in the meantime I can keep an eye out for some bargain components so it might not be that long down the line.

TIA

 

[Bidule0hm]

Well, if you've read the ECC RAM thread (if not, link is in my signature) you know that backups of the NAS will not protect the data against effects of non-ECC RAM because you'll backup already corrupted data.

 

[SandLake]

Aarrgghh - I did know about that but somehow had overlooked it. The non-ECC issue is a silent killer.

In that case should I now reconfigure to just not use ZFS - or (can I ask this?) look elsewhere at a non ZFS solution?

Thanks

 

[Bidule0hm]

FreeNAS 9.3 is ZFS only... You can look at NAS4Free for example ;)

 

[SandLake]

Cheers - I need to do some serious thinking!

 

[SirMaster]

Just because you don't have ECC memory doesn't mean you should automatically rule out using ZFS though. It's just best practice to use ECC with ZFS as it is best practice to use ECC with any data storage system.

 

[dlavigne]

Also keep in mind that one of the ZFS creators and ongoing developers has a famous quote: "ZFS on a system without ECC is no more dangerous than any other filesystem on a system with ECC". You want ECC for critical data. It's up to you to determine how critical your data is.

 

[Bidule0hm]

"ZFS on a system without ECC is no more dangerous than any other filesystem on a system with ECC"

I disagree: with ZFS you can lose ALL the data of a pool because instead of just a few files and there's no recovery tools, so I say ZFS with non-ECC RAM is worse than UFS/NTFS/... with non-ECC RAM.

However the risk is small, it's up to you to take it or not.

 

[SandLake]

Thanks all!

I need to sit down and have a reasoned think about all this - the vast majority of my data is movies which are not that important really but I have all my own photographs and other personal files which needs much more due care and attention.

Something to mull over!

I'm thinking :-

Server A - FreeNAS with non-ECC ram
Server B - NAS4Free using UFS

Media files on Server A backed up to Server B
Personal files on Server B backed up to Server A

In time replace Server A with FreeNAS and ECC ram sooner rather than later and turn Server A into some other (Linux?) storage server for more backups.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Sounds like a good idea ;)

 

[SandLake]

Still some thought required but thanks!

Off to mull now.

 

[Zedicus]

what hardware do you currently have?
are you using prebuilt servers or custom building?
an ECC capable system can be had for not a lot of money these days.
heck a VM host can be had for relatively cheaply anymore.