RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on several hard disks that operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same data is kept on all the drives and the key advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors suggest that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

Our state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created uses super fast SSD drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disk drives operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, which means that not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is another level of protection for your data together with the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your Internet sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content which you upload will be held on SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the information that is copied to a new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning because the website 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 that even if a drive stops working, the system could switch to another one immediately without service interruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of safety for the content you upload on our cloud hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to verify the integrity of every single file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The physical servers where we generate virtual private server use super fast SSD drives which will increase the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The hard disks function in RAID to ensure that you will not lose any information because of a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers employ many different drives where the info is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the info copied on it, which makes it easier to recover the website content without loss in the event a main drive fails. In case you take advantage of our backup service, your information will be kept 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 site content all the time. With this configuration your information will always be safe since it will be available on a lot of drives.