RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on several hard disk drives that work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is divided into separate ones via virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same data is saved on all drives and the basic benefit of using such a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the other ones. Having a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors show that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types may vary.

RAID in Website Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data stored on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the info that will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file correctly and to verify the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information you upload to your website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your websites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all the content which you upload will be held on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info which is copied to a brand new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID fails since the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a disk drive stops functioning, the system could switch to another one instantly without service interruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of safety for the content that you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you employ one of our virtual private server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives which function in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk within the RAID breaks down, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any probability of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use standard hard disk drives which operate in RAID for storing backups, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.