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A lot of branded servers come with ECC RAM, but it is expensive.

For a database server or other critical servers, what would be the impact of not using ECC RAM?

Data corruption? (I suppose the database software should handle this already, right?) So why would I need ECC RAM?

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This has been discussed quite a lot already. See, for example: serverfault.com/questions/5887/… – Kendall Dec 30 '11 at 16:35
unfortunately, these answers are simply wrong. Database's ACID does not require ECC RAM. – Howard Dec 30 '11 at 16:39
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@Howard - However, a bit error on a cached data block can get written out to disk with that bit error, which then persists the bit error for all eternity. The DBMS may or may not have a checksum on individual blocks, but it doesn't calculate and store error correcting codes on the pages - at least none that I'm aware of do this. A bit error on an index block could be really dire. – ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Dec 30 '11 at 18:42
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closed as exact duplicate by Sam♦ Dec 30 '11 at 16:37

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