RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on a number hard drives that function together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is split into separate ones via virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same information is kept on all drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also improves the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info located on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the data that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives along with the information from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file adequately and to verify the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the info you upload to your website hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your sites within a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content which you upload will be held on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the drives is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the information that is copied to a new drive in the event that one of the drives in the RAID fails because the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a drive fails, the system could switch to a different one promptly without service disturbances of any kind. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums so as to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The SSD drives that we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information that will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the needed data is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.