RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to employ many hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. This type of a configuration has two major advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessed through the others, and the second is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. There are different RAID types depending on what number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both executed from all drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info stored on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the data which will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to validate the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information which you upload to your website hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on SSD drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the Internet sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the info that will be cloned on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to ensure that the data that 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 additional warranty for the integrity of your info because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a special checksum of all copies of the files on the various drives to be able to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The SSD drives which we use on the machines where we create virtual private servers work in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is changed and the info that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the required data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unforeseen hardware malfunction.