RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on multiple hard drives that operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case a single drive is split into individual ones using virtualization software. In any case, identical information is saved on all of the drives and the basic benefit of using such a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also improves the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors indicate that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types could differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information kept on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the malfunctioning one, the information that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the information from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content which you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content that you upload will be stored on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info that is cloned to a brand new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID stops working since the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a disk drive stops functioning, the system could switch to a different one promptly without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content that you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you use one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives that function in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID breaks down, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the defective one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use regular hard disk drives which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your content will be saved on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.