Proxmox Host with Non-ECC memory and a Freenas Shared Storage Server with ECC Memory

[am45931472]

hello everyone.

So for a long time I have wanted to build a shared network storage server to house my home lab VMs instead of just storing them locally on my Proxmox Host. Lots of reasons for doing this, a few for not doing this. However, and my real question here, I have always wondered about the ramifications of running a storage server with ECC memory while connecting to that shared vm storage from a machine that does not use ecc memory over either ISCSI or NFS. Think a proxmox to Freenas connection. Would that proxmox host get any of the benefit of the freenas storage box employing ecc memory or not or am I worrying about nothing here. I understand that there is lots of debate about ECC memory, and that is not where I want to take this conversation.

In short I would like to take advantage of the high capacity memory avalible in server boards that can use RDIMM AND LRDIMM while also taking advantage of the high clock speed offered by say the new threadripper, or even consumer CPUs like the ryzen 3950x. Yes Yes I know you can get ecc udimms for threadripper but that capps out at only 128gb and ecc udimms are so expensive.

 

[pricklypunter]

ECC is a critical part of any data integrity planning. Using it with FreeNAS, or as part of any storage platform for that matter, is not just a good idea, it is critical for data protection. But if you skimp out in the rest of the infrastructure and allow the possibility/ introduction of silent data corruption, before storing it on said platform, there's little point, in my opinion, in making attempts to protect the corrupted data after the fact. Junk in, Junk out

I get it, the consumer stuff is mighty fast these days, and tempting, but you need to decide on whether you are going down the consumer path, or the enterprise path