Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard disks at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is the fact that they all function as a single unit where information is saved. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all drives is the same all the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also better as the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance could differ according to the specific setup - whether your data is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Website Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our innovative cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but super fast solid-state drives (SSD). They function in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we use. All the content that you upload to the website hosting account will be held on multiple hard drives and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be changed with no 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 to guarantee the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never have to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - whenever data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the websites because the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the info which will be copied on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the data which is being cloned is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the separate drives in order to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we offer are generated on physical servers which employ SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the information copied on it and in case a main disk fails, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the correct data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your sites will still be online because all the info will still load from at least 1 other hard drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your info will be stored on standard hard drives which also work in RAID as we would like to make sure that any type of content you upload will be protected all the time. Employing multiple hard drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.