Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on a number of hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all operate as just one single unit where data is saved. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the info on all drives is identical at all times, so even if one of the drives fails for some reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also better as the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ according to the specific setup - whether info is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info kept on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the information that will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to validate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information that you upload to your cloud hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ 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. Put simply, whenever any data is cloned on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a faulty disk is changed, the info that will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to ensure that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be working normally because RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without any service disturbances and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to warrant that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The SSD drives that we use on the machines where we generate VPS servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data which will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the right data is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unexpected hardware failure.