Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all operate as one single unit where information is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the info on all of the drives shall be exactly the same all of the time, so even if a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the other drives. The overall performance is also better as the reading and writing processes could be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may vary based on the exact setup - whether your data is written on all drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info kept on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the info which will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every file properly and to confirm the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the content you upload to your shared hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is named RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is copied on this particular drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a faulty disk is replaced, the info that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the data is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without any service disturbances and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server solutions, any content which you upload will be saved on SSD drives which function in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also use conventional hard disk drives that work in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.