RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on multiple hard disks which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is split into different ones using virtualization software. In either case, the very same data is kept on all drives and the basic advantage of using this kind of a setup is that if a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized 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 mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types may vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The drives which we use for storage with our ground-breaking cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we use. Any content that you upload to the shared hosting account will be held on multiple hard disks and at least one of them will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without service disruptions and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never have to concern yourself with the loss of any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives which are used for storing any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this kind of a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what info will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't have an impact on the proper operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our revolutionary cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers identified as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

The physical servers where we make virtual private server use extremely fast SSD drives which will increase the speed of your websites noticeably. The hard drives work in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any data as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. 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 data copied on it, which makes it easier to recover the content without any loss if a main drive breaks down. In case you take advantage of our backup service, the info will be kept on an independent machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and though there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup of your content all of the time. With this particular setup your information will always be safe because it will be available on multiple disk drives.