Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is that they all function as just a single unit where your information is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all of the drives is the same all the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the other drives. The overall performance is also better because the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may vary according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are generated employs super fast SSD drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disk drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, so not a thing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is one more level of protection for your info in addition to the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives that are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this kind of a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be copied on the latter will be a combination 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 correct. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating normally and the problematic drive will not impact the normal operation of your sites by any means. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers named checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts that we offer are generated on physical servers that take advantage of SSD drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is added to the data duplicated on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the accurate data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your Internet sites will remain online because all the info will still load from at least 1 other drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your info will be kept on standard hard disks which also function in RAID because we want to make certain that any type of content you add will be safe and sound all the time. Using multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.