RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which makes it possible for a system to employ several hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a setup has 2 huge advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive stops working, the info will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among a number of drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with the number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both executed from all drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Website Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information saved on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the faulty one, the information that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content which you upload to your website hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives that are used for storing any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data copied on this type of a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the malfunctioning drive won't have an impact on the proper operation of your websites at all. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

The SSD drives that we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the information which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the right information is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.