RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on several hard drives which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is split into independent ones using virtualization software. Either way, the very same info is stored on all drives and the basic advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

All content which you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be placed on fast SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. This setup is built to employ the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds an additional level of security for your website content on top of the real-time checksum validation that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the info is saved on a couple of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever information is recorded on it, an extra bit is added, so if any drive stops functioning for some reason, the stability of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is saved on the production hard disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will never be interrupted and it will continue working smoothly until the malfunctioning drive is replaced and the info is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives that are used for storing any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more drives are used 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 information will be cloned on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the problematic drive won't affect the proper operation of your Internet sites in any way. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers called checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be stored on SSD drives that operate in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ ordinary hard disk drives which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you add this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.