Re: Most energy efficient (home) setup

[Joe Greco <jgreco () ns sol net>]

> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Joe Greco <jgreco () ns sol net> wrote:
> > The current Mac mini "Server" model sports an i7 2.0GHz quad-core CPU
> > and up to 16GB RAM (see OWC for that, IIRC). =A0Two drives, up to 750GB
> > each, or SSD's if you prefer.
>
> The Mac mini server is quite intringuing with that low power
> requirement . Unfortunately...  16 GB   _Non-ECC_ memory.  I sure
> would not want to run a  NAS VM  on a server  with non-ECC memory that
> cannot correct single-bit errors,  at least  with any data I cared
> much about..
>
> When you have such a large quantity of RAM, single-bit/fade errors
> caused by background irradiation happen often, although at a fairly
> low rate. Usually on a workstation it's not an issue,  because there
> is not a massive quantity of idle memory.
>
> If you're running this 24x7 with VMs and Non-ECC memory,  it's only a
> question of time,
> before silent memory corruption results in one of the VMs.
>
> And silent memory corruption can make its way to the filesystem,  or
> applications'  internal saved data structures  (such as the contents
> of a VM's registry database).
>
> True can be partially mitigated with backups;  but the idea of  VMs
> blue-screening or ESXi  crashing with purple screen  every 3 or 4
> months sounds annoying.

While I don't disagree with the general thought, one could also say
it's just a matter of time before your server's power supply fails, or
a fan fails, or a hard drive fails.

Since we don't hear about Mac mini server users screaming about how 
their servers are constantly crashing, the severity and frequency of
memory corruption events may not be anywhere near what you suggest.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
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