Stick with FreeNAS?

[Mystara]

Hi,

I've been using FreeNAS for a few months to store some non-critical data and time-machine backups. All of the data on my FreeNAS machine is backed up offsite and I don't use any kind of RAID.

I've been running this all on a custom build G3420 (Pentium; 3.2 GHz; Dual core) with 16 GB of RAM and two 4 TB hard disks. Given that the data is non-critical, and given the stark warnings against using non-ECC RAM with ZFS, I opted for UFS.

Now that FreeNAS 9.3 has been released, UFS is no longer an option. My long term choices therefore seem to be:

- Move to ZFS
- Move to other software

My hardware isn't best-suited for ZFS, which is why I'm considering moving on. However, it's just a "home use" machine (max 2 users) and I'm therefore curious as to whether I'll really suffer with non-ECC RAM, especially if I'm not doing any kind of RAID or encryption.

Thoughts?

 

[jgreco]

Non-ECC will work fine unless you happen to have bad luck and memory corruption strikes. This could result in anything from nothing at all happening all the way to catastrophic pool loss.

Do you ride in your car with the seatbelt? When was the last time you got in an accident? ... It might never happen. Or it might.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, good news is that your CPU supports ECC, so it'd be one less expense if you were to move to ECC.

 

[Mystara]

My mobo doesn't though :(

But good point.

 

[joeschmuck]

Why move to 9.3 ? Isn't 9.2.1.9 doing a good enough job or are there features in 9.3 that you must have?

As for ECC-RAM, truth be told, you could run a ZFS system and eliminate ever doing a scrub on the pool and you would have the exact same risk of data corruption as on a UFS drive. The big threat with ZFS is during a Scrub if you have a stuck RAM bit or two.

My advice, if you are fine with what you have, stick with it. You can do your upgrade in more cost effective steps like this:
1) Purchase one of the many Supermicro motherboards with an LGA 1150 socket, install your current CPU and RAM and do a RAM test using MemTest86+ to ensure your RAM works fine with the motherboard. Then run this until you can afford the ECC RAM.
2) Purchase the ECC RAM, install it and run the MemTest86+ of course, but then you're done.

The hard part will be for you to justify the costs of the upgrades but that is up to you.

 

[jgreco]

As for ECC-RAM, truth be told, you could run a ZFS system and eliminate ever doing a scrub on the pool and you would have the exact same risk of data corruption as on a UFS drive. The big threat with ZFS is during a Scrub if you have a stuck RAM bit or two.

Sorry, not true. A scrub is effectively a reading of the entire filesystem.

Unlike UFS, ZFS will correct errors if detected during a read op. So you have a risk to introduce errors into the on-disk data if it is correct, gets read into bad RAM, "corrected" back to disk... now your data on disk is bad AND the consumer of the data gets bad data. With UFS, the only part of that that happens is the consumer gets bad data.

 

[joeschmuck]

That is true what you said but that only takes into account a read from the drive, but then again I was the one who mentioned the Scrub. You never mentioned writing bad data under normal use which is also an issue for either system. I think the end result is non-ECC RAM is a risk on any computer system.

 

[jgreco]

I was taking issue with the specific claim "exact same risk."

ZFS is unusual in that reads from a pool could cause corrective activity. You are welcome to call me a pedant if you want. ;-)

 

[danb35]

1) Purchase one of the many Supermicro motherboards with an LGA 1150 socket, install your current CPU and RAM and do a RAM test using MemTest86+ to ensure your RAM works fine with the motherboard.

Do the X10 boards support non-ECC memory? My X9SCL doesn't.

 

[Ericloewe]

Do the X10 boards support non-ECC memory? My X9SCL doesn't.

Most claim not to, but the workstation ones (X10SAE) support both and have QVLs for both.

 

[cyberjock]

Every Intel system I've tried to use non-ECC RAM in has worked. Obviously you're a little silly to actually put non-ECC RAM in a system that would otherwise use ECC RAM and then do it long term. I tried it on my systems "because I could" and at the time they were unused hardware. ;)

 

[Knowltey]

Do the X10 boards support non-ECC memory? My X9SCL doesn't.

My X10 does not support non-ECC. When I build my current build I wanted to do a CPU and Mobo stability test ahead of time since they were delivered like a week ahead of my RAM, but then it wouldn't boot for me with regular memory.