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 based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all operate as one single unit where info is stored. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives is the same all of the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance is also better because the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary depending on the specific setup - whether data is written on all of the drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Website Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info stored on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the data which will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file correctly and to validate the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the info you upload to your website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your Internet sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, any content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the information which is duplicated to a brand new drive if one of the hard drives in the RAID fails since the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in case a drive fails, the system can switch to another one immediately without service disruptions of any sort. 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 to authenticate the integrity of every single file.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you employ one of our virtual private server packages, any content that you upload will be stored on SSD drives that operate in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID breaks down, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ regular hard disk drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.