RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on several hard drives that function together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is split into separate ones using virtualization software. Either way, identical information is stored on all of the drives and the key benefit of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the hard 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 show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The disk drives that we use for storage with our ground-breaking cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but quick solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we use. All of the content that you upload to your cloud hosting account will be held on multiple hard drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed with no service disturbances and the info will be recovered 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 so as to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never have to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives which are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this kind of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be copied on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the adequate operation of your websites in any way. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers called checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The physical servers where we generate virtual private server work with fast SSD drives that will increase the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The drives function in RAID to ensure that you will not lose any data due to a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers take advantage of many different drives where the data 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 breaks down. If you pick our backup service, your information will be stored on an independent machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there's 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 setup your info will always be safe as it will be available on several disk drives.