RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on a number hard disks which work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same data is stored on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing this type of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors imply that the fault tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The hard drives that we employ for storage with our top-notch cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we use. All of the content that you add to your website hosting account will be held on multiple hard disks and at least 1 shall be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed with no service disruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about the loss of any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is referred to as 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 data is duplicated on this special hard drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a faulty disk is changed, the info which will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information is intact. During this process, your websites will be up and running normally since RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing 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 ever have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives which operate in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the defective one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ ordinary hard disk drives that function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add 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 failures.