RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on multiple hard disks which work together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is split into different ones through virtualization software. Either way, identical information is kept on all the drives and the main benefit of employing this type of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also enhances the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synchronized between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The disk drives that we use for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we employ. Any content that you upload to your cloud website hosting account will be stored on multiple hard disks and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed without service disruptions and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever have to be concerned about losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is called 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 cloned on this particular hard drive, one more bit is added to it and if a problematic disk is changed, the info which will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that your information is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without any service disruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Hosting

All virtual private server accounts that our company provides are made on physical servers which take advantage of SSD drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is added to the info duplicated on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the accurate info is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your websites will stay online as all the data will still load from at least one other hard drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the data will be saved on standard hard disks that also function in RAID since we would like to make certain that any sort of content you add will be risk-free at all times. Using multiple drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.