Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all perform as just one single unit where info is kept. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all drives shall be exactly the same all the time, so even if some drive fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may differ based on the specific setup - whether data is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

Any content that you upload to your new cloud website hosting account will be held on quick SSD drives that function in RAID-Z. This setup is built to use the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds one more level of security for your site content in addition to the real-time checksum verification that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is saved on a couple of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is written on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive fails for whatever reason, the integrity of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is kept on the production hard disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will not be interrupted and it'll continue working smoothly until the malfunctioning drive is replaced and the info is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any data is duplicated on this particular hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the information which will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that your data is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we offer are created on physical servers which take advantage of SSD drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is included in the info cloned on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the accurate information is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your websites will remain online as all the data will still load from at least 1 other hard drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of your information will be saved on standard disk drives that also operate in RAID because we would like to make certain that any type of site content you upload will be risk-free all the time. Using multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.