RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on several hard disk drives which function together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is split into different ones through virtualization software. In any case, the same info is kept on all drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also enhances the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

Our revolutionary cloud hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are generated employs fast SSD drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard drives operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is another level of protection for your info together with the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data that is cloned to a brand new drive if one of the drives in the RAID stops working since the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data 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 hard drive stops working, the system can easily switch to a different one right away without service disruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content which you upload on our cloud web hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

If you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives that operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk inside the RAID stops working, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated 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 disks which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you add this service to your VPS plan, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.