Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is the fact that they all operate as just one single unit where data is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the info on all of the drives will be exactly the same all of the time, so even in case a drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the other drives. The general performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may differ according to the exact setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Web Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information stored on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the bad one, the information that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each file adequately and to validate the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is duplicated on this special hard drive, one more bit is included to it and if a defective disk is replaced, the info which will be copied on it is a combination of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to ensure that the info is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally because RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without any service disturbances 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 shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you'll never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The SSD drives which we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is changed and the info which will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the needed info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unforeseen hardware malfunction.