Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard disks concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is the fact that they all function as one single unit where info is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the information on all the drives shall be exactly the same all the time, so even if one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes could be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may vary according to the particular setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Hosting

The disk drives which we use for storage with our top-notch cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but quick solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we employ. Any content that you add to your hosting account will be saved on multiple drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed with no service interruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you won't ever need to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud 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 one of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this particular disk drive, one more bit is added to it and if a malfunctioning disk is changed, the information that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that your information is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without 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 which uses checksums to warrant that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you'll never need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The SSD drives that we use on the machines where we set up VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive stops working, it is changed and the data that will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the right data is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unexpected hardware malfunction.