Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all function as just one single unit where info is saved. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the info on all the drives will be the same all of the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is also better because the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The hard disks which we use for storage with our revolutionary cloud hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but extremely fast solid-state drives (SSD). They function in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we employ. Any content that you add to the shared web hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least one of them will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be changed with no service disturbances and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you will never have to concern yourself with the loss of any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives that are used for keeping any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on this type of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue operating normally and the problematic drive will not have an effect on the normal operation of your sites in any respect. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts which we offer are made on physical servers which use SSD drives working in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is added to the info cloned on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the right data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your sites will remain online as all the data will still load from at least one other drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be stored on standard hard disks which also work in RAID because we want to make sure that any kind of content you upload will be risk-free all the time. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.