RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on several hard disk drives which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is divided into independent ones via virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same info is stored on all the drives and the main advantage of employing this type of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors mean that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The hard disks that we employ for storage with our innovative cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but quick solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system that we use. All of the content that you add to the shared hosting account will be held on multiple disk drives and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be changed with no service disturbances and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever have to worry about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the work of the sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a new drive is included, the info which will be copied on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done so as to guarantee that the information which is being cloned is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your data as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives to be able to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The SSD drives that 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 the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive fails, it is replaced and the information that will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the needed info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unpredicted hardware failure.