ECC corrects single bit errors and detects multi-bit errors.
Why should you care? Well, if you are lucky, the machine crashes. If you are unlucky, it keeps running, and that bad data gets written to disk, or causes a cumulative error in some calculation, and you never know about it.
With the size of memories these days, chances of a corrupted memory are not exactly a rare occurrence.
I don't know enough about Riak, but a cluster is only going to help if key data structures are themselves checked for consistency across the cluster.
The question is: how does the size of memory affect the probability of a bit that matters to get corrupted? Who cares if one character somewhere among millions of product reviews or comments gets corrupted?
Why should you care? Well, if you are lucky, the machine crashes. If you are unlucky, it keeps running, and that bad data gets written to disk, or causes a cumulative error in some calculation, and you never know about it.
With the size of memories these days, chances of a corrupted memory are not exactly a rare occurrence.
I don't know enough about Riak, but a cluster is only going to help if key data structures are themselves checked for consistency across the cluster.