RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disk drives that work together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same info is kept on all the drives and the basic benefit of using this kind of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors imply that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info kept on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the data that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your shared website hosting account along with the ZFS file system which compares a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives that are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data copied on such a drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what data will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive will not impact the adequate operation of your Internet sites in any way. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you employ one of our virtual private server packages, any content which you upload will be stored on SSD drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk from the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ ordinary hard drives which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your site 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 failures.