RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to use multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has 2 huge advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, the info will be accessed from the others, and the second is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among different drives. You can find different RAID types based on how many drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both handled from all drives at the same time, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Determined by the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

Our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are made employs quick SSD drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disk drives function together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is one more level of protection for your information in addition to the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the hard drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info that is duplicated to a brand new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops working as the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even in case a hard drive fails, the system can easily switch to a different one right away without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of protection for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums so as to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server solutions, any content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives that function in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk from the RAID stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also use conventional hard drives that function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.