Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard disks simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is the fact that they all perform as just one single unit where your information is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the data on all the drives will be the same all of the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance can vary according to the particular setup - whether your data is written on all drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information kept on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your websites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the information which will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information which you upload to your cloud website hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all of the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives which are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data cloned on this kind of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be copied on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive won't have an effect on the normal operation of your Internet sites by any means. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers referred to as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers that use SSD drives working in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the data duplicated on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the right data is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will stay online as all the data will still load from at least one more drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the data will be saved on standard disk drives that also function in RAID since we would like to make sure that any type of content you add will be protected all of the time. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all of the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.