Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is the fact that they all work as just one single unit where your information is saved. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives will be identical all the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance could differ depending on the specific setup - whether data is written on all 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, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

Our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are made employs quick SSD drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard drives function together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, therefore practically nothing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is another level of security for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites within a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all the content that you upload will be stored on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the hard disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is copied to a new drive in the event that one of the hard drives in the RAID stops working because the website content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a hard drive stops working, the system can easily switch to a different one right away without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds one more level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud web hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The SSD drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up VPS servers function in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive stops working, it is changed and the information that will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the needed data is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unexpected hardware malfunction.