Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what is common between them is that they all work as just a single unit where data is saved. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the data on all drives shall be identical all of the time, so even in case some drive fails for some reason, the data will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes can be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may differ depending on the exact setup - whether data is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared website hosting accounts are made employs fast SSD drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore not a thing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is another level of protection for your data along with the revolutionary ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives that are used for holding any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on such a hard drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the problematic drive won't impact the proper operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

The physical servers where we create virtual private server use super fast SSD drives that will raise the speed of your Internet sites considerably. The hard disks operate in RAID to make sure that you will not lose any info as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers employ multiple drives where the information is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the information copied on it, which makes it much easier to recover the content without any loss in the event a main drive fails. If you pick our backup service, your info will be stored on a separate machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to make sure that we will have a backup of your content at all times. With this setup your info will always be safe because it will be available on a lot of drives.