Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on a number of hard disks at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all work as a single unit where information is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the information on all the drives is the same all of the time, so even if one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may vary based on the specific setup - whether information is written on all drives in real time or it's written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

Any content that you upload to your new cloud website hosting account will be held on fast SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. This setup is built to work with the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds an additional level of protection for your site content on top of the real-time checksum validation that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is saved on a couple of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever information is written on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive stops functioning 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 disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will never be interrupted and it will continue functioning efficiently until the problematic drive is replaced and the data is synchronized on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives which are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data duplicated on such a hard drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be cloned on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working adequately and the problematic drive won't have an impact on the adequate operation of your Internet sites by any means. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our advanced cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you use one of our virtual private server plans, any content you upload will be kept on SSD drives that operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk part of the RAID fails, your sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also use ordinary hard disks that work in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.