RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to use a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This type of a configuration has two major advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the data will be accessible through the others, and the second one is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among a number of drives. You can find different RAID types depending on how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both executed from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Depending on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Hosting

Our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all hosting accounts are made uses quick SSD drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard drives operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case a 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 saved on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is an additional level of security for your information along with the revolutionary ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is stored on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the work of the sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the data that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done to guarantee that the data which is being copied is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your data as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a special checksum of all of the copies of the files on the different drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The SSD drives that we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information that will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the needed information is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any unpredicted hardware failure.