OT ECC Memory (WAS: Large uptime)

[Denis Sbragion]

Hello,

At 04.20 24/02/99 +1100, Hall, Ken (ECCS) wrote:
>I have Linux and Netware servers that have run well over 6 months at a time
>with no problems.  Not only don't they have ECC, I don't even think the
>SIMMS have parity!

I think this may be luck. I also had one customer that run a Linux server
without ECC for few months with no problem, but it was just one. I admit
also I saw the "1 bit a month" report few years ago. May be memory chips
became more reliable in the meantime. It was also an average report, so
some memory chips may provide better performance. Anyway it's sure that
DRAM chips loose bits, else why do ECC memory exists? Supposing new memory
chips loose just 1 bit a year per megabit on the average, multiply this by
the typycal 32 or 64 MBytes of ram of a small server and you'll get the
picture. I *always* put a saturday night reboot in the crontab of non ECC
servers, whether they are Linux or not. Furthermore, just to get the full
picture, I *never* saw a problem on a Linux server whith ECC.

Bye!

	Sbragion Denis
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