RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to employ many hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. Such a setup has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the data will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There're different RAID types depending on how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both executed from all of the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Based on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The drives that we use for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but super fast solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you upload to your cloud hosting account will be kept on multiple hard drives and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be replaced without any service disruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you will never have to concern yourself with the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is copied on this special disk drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a faulty disk is replaced, the information that will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that your data is intact. During this process, your websites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for an entire drive to fail without causing any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you'll never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

In case you employ one of our virtual private server packages, any content you upload will be saved on SSD drives which work in RAID. At least a single drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the defective one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use conventional hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.