Dear Community!
My primary question is the following:
What will cause me less pain when doing ZFS + dedup with Linux (Ubuntu/Debian) on Zen 2
overclocking ECC RAM or using non-ECC RAM ?
The RAM I am considering is either
2x32GB Samsung DDR4-2666, CL19-19-19, ECC or
2x32GB G.Skill RipJaws V DDR4-3600, CL18-22-22-42, (non-ECC)
I know that ECC is commonly recommended for ZFS, though there are diverging opinions.
Notwithstanding I do not want to get a speed decrease on the workstation by running it at less than 1:1 IF speeds (esp. in sight of later CPU updates).
I personally do not have enough experience to decide on that question, hence I ask for the wisdom of the community.
additional info/ background:
I am doing my PhD in Physics on MRI raw data recon. Due to CoViD I have to improvise in order to get things done despite not being able to use the university resources while being low on funding. So my home ryzen 3700X workstation has to do both data storage and a part of the really demanding calculations (I know separate systems would be the optimum but that will not be possible in the moment)
Before CoViD I stored the pseudonymized MRI (k-space raw) data I acquired redundantly on external HDD (according to the study prescription, ethics rules etc.)
After this intermediate step I should go to the workstation in the department -this is not possible in the moment (and will not be where I am for quite some time ). However I am allowed to work on the (non image) raw data at home.
The data is higly redundant due to headers so a high deduplication ratio is to be expected.
But first things first - I have to consolidate the huge dataset. I organized 8x4TB WD RED from other projects and want to set up a RAIDZ2 with deduplication.
Currently I use 32GB non ECC RAM (2x16GB DDR4-3600) but that’s to small even without having the RaidZ2 when I start my scientific calculations and run a KVM simultaniously.
I do not want to get a speed decrease on the workstation by running it at less than 1:1 IF speeds (esp. in sight of later CPU updates). So my options are overclocing the ECC RAM or using non ECC memory.
Notwithstanding that data safety is very important for me as a lot of time and effort goes into working on it and my PhD depends on it (if reviewers want to see my results)
To address the elephant in the room: I plan to use L2ARC.
Here I would have a second question:
I plan to use a NVMe SSD for this. What SSD would you recommend for it? (I have two PCIe 4.0 lanes at an M.2 via the chipset)
Would the Intel Optane Memory H10 with Solid State Storage 32GB + 512GB, M.2 make sense for this as SLOG (on Optane) and L2ARC or would you recommend otherwise?
My setup: Asus WS 570 + Ryzen 3700X + Nvida 1060 FE + AMD 570 (for KVM passtrough) + HP HBA + 8x4TB WD RED (CMR )
Thank you very much for reading through this long post and giving me advice
I wish you all health and a productive home office (if possible)