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ECC is nice to have but absolutely not a show stopper if you don't have it. Plenty of articles and discussions online, example: http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-yo...

Claim that you can only use ZFS with ECC memory to feel safe is false.

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Wait until you get a 1-bit flip in a spacemap record. Then you just won't be able to import your pool (insta-panic). And good luck with fining and fixing that flipped bit.

While it is indeed false that one needs ECC RAM to use ZFS, ECC by itself helps keep the data is memory safe.

I used to use non-ECC memory on my laptop when running Belenix, and I now use ECC memory on my servers at Hetzner where I run my own Illumos builds.

(I'm one of the maintainers of Belenix, an early opensolaris based distro that was the foundation of Solaris 11. I'm working on reviving it again)

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