RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to use many hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has 2 key advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among several drives. There're different RAID types depending on how many drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both executed from all the drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind 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 information saved on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the information that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file adequately and to verify the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info you upload to your cloud web hosting account together with the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any data is copied on this special hard drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a defective disk is changed, the information that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the remaining drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the data is intact. During this process, your sites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without service disruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The physical servers where we create virtual private server employ super fast SSD drives which will boost the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The disk drives function in RAID to guarantee that you won't lose any information as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers work with multiple drives where the data is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all information copied on it, that makes it much easier to restore the site content without any loss if a main drive stops working. In case you pick our backup service, the info will be kept on an individual machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and though there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup of your content at all times. With this kind of setup your info will always be safe since it will be available on many drives.