Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on multiple hard drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all operate as one single unit where info is saved. The key advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the information on all of the drives will be the same all of the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance could differ depending on the exact setup - whether information is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information saved on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your websites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the info that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file adequately and to authenticate the integrity of the data duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the content you upload to your cloud website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all disk drives in real time.

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 provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific 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 the event that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what info will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive shall be correct. During the process, the RAID will continue working normally and the faulty drive will not impact the normal operation of your Internet sites at all. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses special digital identifiers referred to as checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The physical servers where we make virtual private server work with super fast SSD drives which will increase the speed of your sites considerably. The hard drives function in RAID to ensure that you will not lose any info as a result of a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers take advantage of multiple drives where the info is stored and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all data copied on it, which makes it easier to recover the site content without loss if a main drive fails. In case you take advantage of our backup service, the information will be stored on a separate machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there is no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to ensure that we will have a backup of your content all of the time. With this particular setup your info will always be safe since it will be available on several disk drives.