Quoting Reco (2019-08-08 17:25:02)
Hi.
On Thu, Aug 08, 2019 at 04:54:17PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
Then Intel stopped making desktop boards and I wanted ZFS. ZFS
wants ECC memory. It was time to migrate to server hardware.
My understanding is that ZFS's need / desire for ECC is
something of a myth. It's certainly true that many ZFS / FreeNAS
*users* have such a need, but the filesystem itself apparently
doesn't:
https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/
To summarize: if you're running ZFS, it can protect you from lots
of sources of data corruption. It can't protect you from RAM
errors without ECC, so you should opt for ECC if integrity is your
goal.
None of the other filesystems protect you against RAM errors
either, so this is not a special requirement of ZFS.
ECC memory is rare among ARM SBCs, but Helios4 uses ECC memory!
... with the only problem being the quantity of such RAM.
A typical Helios4 board has whopping 2Gb of RAM, which is about 4
times lower than needed for comfortable ZFS usage (assuming that zpool
size is measured in terabytes) and a user intends to run something
more than a OS kernel and sshd. That estimation deliberately excludes
all advanced ZFS features (such as compression, encryption and
deduplication).
IMO for such RAM sizes it's better to use old trusted MDRAID, LVM,
ext4 and a new kid on the block - dm-integrity (all the needed tools
are in buster, but some assembly is required).
For the record I did not recommend using ZFS on low-end hardware.
The OP asked for advice in buying low-end ARM-based hardware for use as
server, and I pointed out that one ARM SBC (likely the only relatively
cheap one) is known to use ECC memory - which (as the previous poster
pointed out) is interesting _independently_ of choice of filesystem.
Personally I use ext4 with journaling enabled, on either conventional
rotating disks, SSDs, or sdcards (no RAID involved).
- Jonas