Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, however what’s common between them is that they all perform as just one single unit where data is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the information on all of the drives will be exactly the same all of the time, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also better because the reading and writing processes could be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary according to the particular setup - whether data is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The hard drives that we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed solid-state drives (SSD). They function in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we work with. Any content that you upload to the cloud web hosting account will be stored on multiple hard drives and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced with no service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives that are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this kind of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be duplicated on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the normal operation of your Internet sites in any way. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server solutions, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives which function in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk part of the RAID stops working, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use conventional hard drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so if you include 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.