RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which makes it possible for a system to use multiple hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. This kind of a configuration has 2 huge advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessed from the others, and the second is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both handled from all of the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where data located on the other drives is duplicated with an extra 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 information that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file correctly and to validate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content you upload to your cloud hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, any content 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 used for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data that is duplicated to a brand new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning because the site content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a drive fails, the system can easily switch to another one promptly without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of security for the content that you upload on our cloud web hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums in order to verify the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk within the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use standard hard disk drives which function in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.