Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on several hard drives concurrently. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all function as just a single unit where info is stored. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives shall be exactly the same at all times, so even in case a drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance could differ according to the exact setup - whether information is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

All content which you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be held on fast SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. This setup is built to employ the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds an additional level of protection for your content in addition to the real-time checksum verification which ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is saved on a couple of disks and at least one is a parity disk - whenever information is written on it, an additional bit is added, so if any drive stops working for whatever reason, the integrity of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is saved on the production hard drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will never be interrupted and it will continue functioning smoothly until the problematic drive is replaced and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives that are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data cloned on such a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be duplicated on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive shall be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the problematic drive will not affect the adequate operation of your websites in any way. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers identified as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server packages, any content which you upload will be stored on SSD drives that operate in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity to ensure the integrity of your information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk from the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the defective one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use regular hard drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.