From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Jun 26 4:43: 3 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from epsilon.lucida.qc.ca (epsilon.lucida.qc.ca [216.95.146.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 092DA37BBF7 for ; Mon, 26 Jun 2000 04:42:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from matt@ARPA.MAIL.NET) Received: (qmail 2341 invoked by uid 1000); 26 Jun 2000 11:42:52 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 26 Jun 2000 11:42:52 -0000 Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 07:42:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Matt Heckaman X-Sender: matt@epsilon.lucida.qc.ca To: Brad Knowles Cc: FreeBSD-STABLE Subject: Re: Compatibility Question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Spam-Rating: localhost 1.6.2 0/1000/N Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Brad Knowles wrote: : It's been my experience that when you start talking about : significant amounts of RAM (anything over 128-256MB), you really, : *really*, *REALLY* want to be using ECC. Interesting, I've always personally thought ECC to be somewhat overrated and certaintly overpriced. Granted I do not have that much expierence in comparison to some, but I have a machine here running 512M of non-ECC for over a year now without any ram-related problems. (HD did die once though) ... : Depending on what you're doing, how much down time results, how : much your time costs per hour, and how much work is lost by all your : customers, a single crash could cost you more than the ECC RAM that : could have prevented that crash. I don't know, 512M (2x256) of ECC RAM will cost me 2,200$ - that's an awful nasty hit to be taking for what the server will do, which is a generally nasty business called shell services. In other words, there is no single client paying thousands of dollars for web hosting of their company's core page that will cost them (and me) a fortune for any downtime :) Given this situation, I've a hard time justifying that cost, which is only a few hundred dollars less then the *entire* machine is going to cost me, especially for it's role :) : That said, this has nothing to do with Dell PowerEdge servers per : se, just that they allow you to use ECC RAM, and that I'd strongly : encourage you to reconsider this decision. Other than that, the Dell : machines should work for you just fine -- certainly no worse than any : other systems I know of, and better than most. Thank you, I appreciate the input, as well as the information about ECC/non-ECC, it's a subject I've never really discussed before, just me living in my own little world opinions as usual. Thanks again :) : -- : These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy : ====================================================================== : Brad Knowles, || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV : Systems Architect, Mail/News/FTP/Proxy Admin || Rue Colonel Bourg, 124 : Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.13.11/12.49 || B-1140 Brussels : http://www.skynet.be || Belgium : : : To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org : with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message : * Matt Heckaman - mailto:matt@lucida.qc.ca http://www.lucida.qc.ca/ * * GPG fingerprint - A9BC F3A8 278E 22F2 9BDA BFCF 74C3 2D31 C035 5390 * -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (FreeBSD) Comment: http://www.lucida.qc.ca/pgp iD8DBQE5V0G7dMMtMcA1U5ARAoNOAKCJyTCqSJxW3MQ5KoVImlUOnjJ/ywCffJfd Gy3tY7W5gZKMar9S3KtRcIg= =vv5L -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message