RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to use several hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has two major advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the data will be accessible from the others, and the second is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are employed, if reading and writing are both performed from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all hosting accounts are created employs quick SSD drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard disk drives work together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the other drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is one more level of protection for your info in addition to the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this particular drive, one more bit is added to it and if a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the information that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that your data is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you employ one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk part of the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ conventional hard drives which work in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS plan, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.