- RAM errors are a statistical fact.
20 years ago, you have had 1 MB memory. If you increase RAM by a factor 1000, the chance of memory errors scale the same factor. The more memory the more is ECC important.
- Not being aware of RAM problems does not mean that there are no errors. How many Windows crashes are related to Microsoft bugs, driver problems or RAM problems?
- ZFS does not hold filesystems in RAM. It use RAM as readcache. But unlike some years ago this is a feature of every modern OS to improve performance. A false checksum calculation in RAM may add some risk but you must count against the detection of silent disk errors that are otherwise not detected.
So business data on modern servers with a large RAM without ECC is reckless. The same to filesystems. Copy on write filesystems with versioning and their crash resistent behaviour with data checksums is a huge step forward over oldstyle filesystems and absolutely needed with Terabyte storage. Does not matter if you use btrfs, ReFS or the current top choice ZFS. While missing ECC is only a problem initiated by Intel to earn more money as this is an artificial limitation on cheaper systems, the latter is the default in some years.
20 years ago, you have had 1 MB memory. If you increase RAM by a factor 1000, the chance of memory errors scale the same factor. The more memory the more is ECC important.
- Not being aware of RAM problems does not mean that there are no errors. How many Windows crashes are related to Microsoft bugs, driver problems or RAM problems?
- ZFS does not hold filesystems in RAM. It use RAM as readcache. But unlike some years ago this is a feature of every modern OS to improve performance. A false checksum calculation in RAM may add some risk but you must count against the detection of silent disk errors that are otherwise not detected.
So business data on modern servers with a large RAM without ECC is reckless. The same to filesystems. Copy on write filesystems with versioning and their crash resistent behaviour with data checksums is a huge step forward over oldstyle filesystems and absolutely needed with Terabyte storage. Does not matter if you use btrfs, ReFS or the current top choice ZFS. While missing ECC is only a problem initiated by Intel to earn more money as this is an artificial limitation on cheaper systems, the latter is the default in some years.