Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on several hard disks simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is the fact that they all function as just one single unit where your information is stored. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the info on all of the drives shall be identical at all times, so even in case one of the drives fails for some reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes can be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may vary based on the specific setup - whether info is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

All of the content which you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be held on fast SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. This setup is built to work with 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 validation which ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the info is saved on a couple of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is recorded on it, an extra bit is added, so in case any drive stops functioning for whatever reason, the stability of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is saved on the production disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system won't be interrupted and it will continue working flawlessly until the problematic drive is changed and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives which are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data copied on this type of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what information will be cloned on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive will not have an impact on the normal operation of your sites in any way. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers known as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The physical servers where we create virtual private server employ extremely fast SSD drives which will raise the speed of your websites considerably. The hard drives work in RAID to ensure that you will not lose any data due to a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers employ many different drives where the info is stored and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the information copied on it, which makes it easier to restore the site content without any loss if a main drive breaks down. If you take advantage of our backup service, your info will be saved on a separate machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and even though there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup copy of your website content at all times. With this type of setup your information will always be safe since it will be available on several disk drives.