RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to take advantage of many hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. Such a setup has two key advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive stops working, the information will be accessible through the others, and the second is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There're different RAID types depending on the number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all of the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. According to the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info kept on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In the event that 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 info which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each file properly and to verify the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your shared web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, any content which you upload will be saved on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info which is duplicated to a new drive in the event that one of the hard drives in the RAID breaks down since the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a disk drive stops functioning, the system could switch to another one promptly without service interruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an extra level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The SSD drives which we use on the machines where we create virtual private servers work in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the info that will be copied on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the required information is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any unforeseen hardware malfunction.