ECC ram for a Drivepool server.

[grimpr]

Is there any advantage using ECC ram on a Windows Drivepool server? Heard terror stories about not using ECC on ZFS, people loosing their entire pools etc due to memory corruption and the way ZFS uses RAM for scrubbing, there's a lot of hype about ZFS which made me consider it, i played with it on a FreeBSD virtual machine, its powerfull stuff but somehow i feel safer with plain old NTFS and Drivepool, only the ECC ram question remains.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

ECC is not required for StableBit DrivePool, at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure that a vast majority of our users are not using ECC memory, and it's tested on systems without ECC memory. 

 

 

However, because NTFS does use the memory extensively for caching, so there is definitely a benefit to use ECC memory.  If you have a choice and there isn't a vast difference in price, paying for ECC memory is worth the money. 

 

 

Additionally, ZFS has some pretty high memory requirements too (IIRC, the recommended is 1GB per TB of storage). StableBit DrivePool can operate on systems with 512MB of memory without an issue (though, we do recommend a lot more than that, as Windows may be very slow with low memory)

[grimpr]

Thanks. Do you recommend running Windows and Drivepool from a fast USB flash drive using Windows to Go or Win to USB? I would like to use the extra SATA slot for expanding my pool

[Christopher (Drashna)]

As long as it's USB3, and a very fast USB drive (eg, a certified Windows To Go drive), then there shouldn't be any issues with doing so. 

 

I actually tested this out (sort of) recently. Using a USB3 enclosure and a SSD for Windows To Go, and it works fine in that config.