RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to employ several hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This kind of a configuration has 2 major advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the data will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among several drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both executed from all of the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our innovative cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but extremely fast solid-state drives (SSD). They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we use. Any content that you add to the cloud hosting account will be stored on multiple hard disks and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without any service disturbances and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk happens to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the sites as the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the data which will be cloned on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done so as to guarantee that the info which is being copied is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your info because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all of the copies of the files on the different drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

All virtual private server accounts that our company offers are generated on physical servers which employ SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is added to the information copied on it and in case a main disk fails, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the right information is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your Internet sites will remain online since all the info will still load from at least 1 other disk drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the data will be saved on standard hard drives that also operate in RAID as we want to make sure that any sort of content you add will be risk-free all of the time. Using multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.