RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to employ several hard drives as one single logical unit. Put simply, all drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. Such a setup has two key advantages over using just a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessed through the others, and the second is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. You can find different RAID types based on how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both done from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The drives that we use for storage with our ground-breaking cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but extremely fast solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we work with. Any content that you add to your cloud web hosting account will be kept on multiple disk drives and at least one shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be replaced without any service interruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to concern yourself with the loss of any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this special hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the data that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the data is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which 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 take advantage of one of our VPS server solutions, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives which function in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of your information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk from the RAID stops working, your sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use regular hard drives which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.