Server Memory - what's the diff?

[scaryjim]

Massive thread necro, but since I knew I'd done one of these threads recently didn't see the point in starting a new one

I'm currently speccing a home server - Win Server 2k8 r2 + Exchange Server 2k10 seems to be the most likely software option (I love being married to a full-time Maths student ). It'll be serving a couple of non-commercial websites and my personal email (plus perhaps one or two mailboxes/domains for friends if I'm feeling generous ). Two questions remain for me, though:

1) If I use ECC memory, how would I tell that the ECC functions were doing anything? I can set the ECC level in the BIOS and everything functions correctly when I do, but I honestly have no idea if it's doing anything! Is there anything I can use to reliably check?

2) Is it worth the extra tenner to go for ECC unbuffered RAM in this situation? My feeling, given the server will be serving my main email address, is better safe than sorry, but that's based on nothing but speculation and assumption

[kalniel]

1) Not really. CPUz has a check box, but I suspect it's just reading a flag.

2) Did he go for workstation cards, or desktop? If he's fine with no ECC on the GPGPU then he's probably fine with no ECC on the RAM as well. If he's paying the extra for workstation GPUs then he has to get ECC on the RAM as well to be sensible.

3) If this is nothing to do with the original post, and is just an email server, no need for ECC. You *will* have decent redundancy and back-up options though right?

[scaryjim]

1) Not really. CPUz has a check box, but I suspect it's just reading a flag.

Bleurgh, that's daft. How do we know that *any* computer is actually using ECC? It could all be a marketing con!

2) Did he go for workstation cards, or desktop? If he's fine with no ECC on the GPGPU then he's probably fine with no ECC on the RAM as well. If he's paying the extra for workstation GPUs then he has to get ECC on the RAM as well to be sensible.

This isn't in fact about the GPGPU rig in the OP, and I can't remember off the top of my head whether he went for ECC or not (I suspect he did). The cards, however, are standard desktop 7970s and AFAIK he's very happy with them and the calculation server they sit in

3) If this is nothing to do with the original post, and is just an email server, no need for ECC.

Thanks, that's what I was really after an opinion on I wasn't sure if there was a point or not, and when £10 is actually an additional 40% ouytlay, it makes you think twice about just doing it!

You *will* have decent redundancy and back-up options though right?

[badass]

Dell and HP servers come with software that monitors the memory for ECC corrected and uncorrected errors.
I think Dell call it openmanage and HP call it insight manager. Both have an icon on the desktop where you can check the server health.

[scaryjim]

Cheers badass, that won't make much difference to my current consideration (this is an AMD home build - gotta love that AMDs consumer processors have the full set of processor features enabled throughout the line up - Intel could learn a lot from that ) but will definitely help if I ever move back into IT support.

[jiw2003]

Server memory is ECC which means error checking. It's primarily used in Web servers because it's less prone to crash than Non-ECC memory. If you plan to use it for a desktop system then bear in mind that it's about 2% slower than Non-ECC memory which might be an issue for extreme gamers. If you have faulty ECC memory then it is difficult to diagnose the fault (Because of the integrated error correcting). And finally, it seems that only ASUS motherboards will let you use it. MSI, Gigabyte, and ASRock Motherboards don't!