RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on several hard drives that operate together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is split into separate ones using virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same information is kept on all drives and the basic benefit of using such a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also improves the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info located on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the information that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file correctly and to verify the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your cloud hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any kind of data is copied on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the info that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that your information is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The physical servers where we create VPS server employ high-speed SSD drives that will boost the speed of your websites significantly. The hard drives function in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any information due to a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers take advantage of multiple drives where the information is stored and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the information copied on it, that makes it much easier to recover the website content without any loss in case a main drive stops working. In case you pick our backup service, the information will be kept on an individual machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and though there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to make sure that we will have a backup of your content all of the time. With this particular configuration your data will always be safe because it will be available on several drives.