Need help with my setup, ECC for all?
Is it safe for data integrity to use a "non ECC mini pc" that runs docker containers from the volumes of a "NAS with ECC ram"?
Or does the mini pc also require ECC ram for the data integrity?
Sorry if it is a noob question.
First, why is every post on this forum -1? Somebody must be holding a grudge.
Second: it doesn't matter. ECC just prevents bit flips in RAM, once data leaves a system it's irrelevant whether it had ECC or not.
I've been running servers of various kinds for decades. There is a difference between running servers on hardware with ECC vs none, but it's not a big deal. Unless you're running, like, banking software or something where accuracy or uptime is critical...I wouldn't sweat it. You may just have to reboot cuz of a kernel panic once or twice a year.
While ECC memory is nice to have, potential data integrity issues can be mitigated against by using a file system with sufficient redundancy and checksum error correction like zfs or btrfs.
Just run a regular scrub for errors to be auto-corrected from the extra copies.
That would be the plan, the NAS with ECC would run zfs with weekly scrubs (4 to 6 drives)
Edit: now running ECC on devices with critical data or databases