RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to take advantage of a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all of the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This type of a configuration has two key advantages over using just a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the information will be accessed through the others, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There're different RAID types depending on how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both performed from all drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Based on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The hard drives which we use for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but super fast solid-state drives (SSD). They function in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we work with. All of the content that you add to your cloud hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be changed with no service interruptions and the information will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about the loss of any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the websites since the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the information which will be copied on it will be a combination between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the data which is being copied is correct, so once 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 data as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the separate drives so as to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The SSD drives that we use on the machines where we create virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the information which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the needed data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any sort of unexpected hardware failure.