RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to employ a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has two major advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive fails, the data will be accessed through the others, and the second one is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both done from all of the drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Determined by the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The drives that we employ for storage with our top-notch cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but fast solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you upload to your website hosting account will be stored on multiple disk drives and at least 1 will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be replaced without any service disruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you will never have to worry about losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on SSD drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is added, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done so as to ensure that the info that is being duplicated is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your data because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the separate drives to be able to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server plans, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives that function in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ conventional hard disks that function in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.