RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on multiple hard disk drives which function together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case a single drive is divided into independent ones through virtualization software. In any case, the same information is saved on all of the drives and the main advantage of using this kind of a setup is that if a drive fails, the data will still be available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info saved on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the bad one, the information which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to confirm the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the info that you upload to your shared hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which compares a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is called RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this special drive, one more bit is included to it and if a faulty disk is replaced, the info that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that your info is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without service interruptions and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you employ one of our VPS server packages, any content which you upload will be saved on SSD drives which work in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk inside the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also employ conventional hard disks which work in RAID for storing backups, so if you add this service to your VPS package, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.