RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to take advantage of several hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This type of a configuration has two major advantages over using just a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the data will be accessed from the others, and the second is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among a number of drives. There're different RAID types based on what number of drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both executed from all the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Based on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our revolutionary cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but extremely fast solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we work with. All the content that you upload to the website hosting account will be saved on multiple drives and at least 1 shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be replaced without service interruptions and the information will be rebuilt 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 to guarantee the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you will never have to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives which are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data duplicated on such a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what information will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not have an effect on the adequate operation of your websites by any means. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers referred to as checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

If you use one of our virtual private server packages, any content which you upload will be stored on SSD drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID fails, your sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the data 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 avoided. We also employ regular hard drives that work in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.