RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to take advantage of multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has two huge advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the info will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among several drives. You can find different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both done from all the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Based on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance vary.
RAID in Website Hosting
The advanced cloud hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are created employs super fast SSD drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard drives function together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, so not a thing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is another level of protection for your data along with the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
In case you host your sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content you upload will be held on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data which is duplicated to a brand new drive in the event that one of the drives in the RAID breaks down since the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a hard drive fails, the system can switch to a different one instantly without service interruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums so as to validate the integrity of each file.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server packages, any content that you upload will be saved on SSD drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ regular hard disk drives which operate in RAID for storing backups, so in case you add this service to your VPS package, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.