RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disks that function together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into separate ones using virtualization software. In any case, identical information is kept on all of the drives and the basic advantage of employing this type of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the 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 show that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

All of the content which you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be stored on fast SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. This setup is built to use the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform and it adds another level of protection for your website content on top of the real-time checksum verification which ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on several disks and at least one of them is a parity disk - whenever information is recorded on it, an extra bit is added, so if any drive fails for whatever reason, the stability of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is saved on the production hard drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system won't be interrupted and it'll continue functioning efficiently until the malfunctioning drive is changed and the info is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is added, the info which will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done in order to guarantee that the info which is being copied is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your data since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all copies of the files on the separate drives in order to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you use one of our virtual private server solutions, any content which you upload will be stored on SSD drives which work in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk from the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the data that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also use conventional hard disk drives which function in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.