Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard drives concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is that they all function as just one single unit where your information is saved. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the data on all of the drives shall be exactly the same all of the time, so even in the event that some drive fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may differ according to the exact setup - whether information is written on all of the drives real-time or it's written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Web Hosting

The drives which we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed solid-state drives (SSD). They function in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system that we work with. All the content that you upload to your web hosting account will be saved on multiple hard disks and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced with no service disturbances and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never need to be concerned about the loss of any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives that are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data duplicated on such a drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the adequate operation of your sites at all. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our advanced cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server solutions, any content which you upload will be saved on SSD drives that work in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk within the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ standard hard disk drives which function in RAID for storing backups, so if you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.