RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on a number hard disks which function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is split into independent ones using virtualization software. In any case, the very same information is kept on all the drives and the basic benefit of employing such a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will remain available on the other ones. Using a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types may vary.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

Our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform where all shared website hosting accounts are created uses fast SSD drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard disks operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus practically nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is another level of protection for your data along with the revolutionary ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all the content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the hard drives is used for parity - when data is synced between the drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is cloned to a brand new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID fails because the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even if a hard drive stops functioning, the system can easily switch to another one right away without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an additional level of safety for the content you upload on our cloud web hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to verify the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server packages, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives which operate in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk inside the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also employ ordinary hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backups, so if you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.