RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to employ multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. Such a configuration has 2 major advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the data will be accessed through the remaining ones, and the second one is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There are different RAID types depending on what number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all drives at the same time, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Based on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The hard disks which we employ for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system that we use. All the content that you upload to your shared web hosting account will be saved on multiple disk drives and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without any service interruptions and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with the loss of any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - each time data is copied 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 as the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the data that will be cloned on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the data which is being copied is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all of the copies of the files on the separate drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The physical servers where we generate virtual private server use quick SSD drives that will raise the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The drives function in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any info as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers work with many different drives where the information is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all information copied on it, which makes it much easier to restore the content without loss if a main drive breaks down. In case you choose our backup service, your info will be saved on an independent machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that 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 particular configuration your info will always be safe since it will be available on many disk drives.