Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard disks simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all perform as a single unit where information is saved. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the information on all the drives shall be identical all the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may vary depending on the particular setup - whether info is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Website Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which 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 additional bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the info that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to validate the integrity of the information copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info which you upload to your website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will 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 duplicated on this particular hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the information that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to guarantee that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

All virtual private server accounts which our company offers are created on physical servers which take advantage of SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one additional bit is included in the info cloned on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the accurate info is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will stay online since all the data will still load from at least 1 other disk drive. In case you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your information will be stored on standard hard disks that also work in RAID because we want to make certain that any site content you add will be risk-free all of the time. Working with multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.