Re: guidance requested: ECC in workstations

From: B. Joshua Rosen (bjrosen_at_polybus.com)
Date: 08/23/03 

Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 15:19:59 -0400

On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 17:51:54 +0000, Jack Foy wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I'm building a home-use workstation which will run Debian. I am using
> as a primary guide ESR's Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO, which emphasizes the
> importance of using ECC RAM in a Unix workstation. One pays a
> substantial premium for a motherboard which properly supports ECC. In
> your experience, how important is this functionality? Is it worth
> paying the premium in a workstation? Thanks in advance.

All of my machines have ECC, I wouldn't consider a system without it. The
actual premium isn't very much. Any workstation quality motherboard will
have ECC support anyway. When comparing prices you have to take into
account all the features of the competing boards. Workstation motherboards
have at least 4 DIMM sockets (very important in a workstation) while cheap
boards have only 2 or 3. They also have gigabit ethernet vs either nothing
or 100baseT on a consumer board. Gigabit may not be important to you right
now but it's nice to be future proofed. Some workstation motherboards will
also have on board RAID, which will be absent on a cheap consumer
motherboard.

As an aside I like SuperMicro boards, their boards are solid and reliable
and they have good Linux support. SuperMicro provides a Linux version of
their health monitoring program, superodoctor. It doesn't sound like much
but there is a principal at stake, SuperMicro is providing the same level
of support to Linux user as they do to Windoze users. Companies that take
the trouble to support Linux ought to be rewarded by Linux users.

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