RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disks that work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into different ones using virtualization software. In any case, identical info is kept on all of the drives and the basic advantage of employing such a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the other ones. Using a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synchronized between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors mean that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The hard drives which we use for storage with our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but super fast solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we employ. All the content that you upload to your cloud hosting account will be kept on multiple hard drives and at least 1 shall be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced without any service interruptions and the information will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never have to concern yourself with losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - any time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the sites because the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info which will be cloned on it will be a combination 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 info which is being cloned is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your data since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a special checksum of all copies of the files on the separate drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

The physical servers where we create virtual private server employ super fast SSD drives that will boost the speed of your sites noticeably. The hard drives operate in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any data due to a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers employ a variety of drives where the information is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the info copied on it, that makes it easier to recover the content without any loss if a main drive breaks down. In case you pick our backup service, the data will be stored on an independent machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and even though 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 website content all the time. With this type of configuration your data will always be safe as it will be available on many drives.