RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives that operate together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. In any case, identical information is saved on all the drives and the basic advantage of employing such a setup is that if a drive fails, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
All content that you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be placed on quick SSD drives that function in RAID-Z. This setup is built to work with the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds another level of protection for your website content in addition to the real-time checksum validation that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on a couple of disks and at least one of them is a parity disk - whenever info is written on it, an additional bit is added, so if any drive fails for whatever reason, the integrity of the info can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is saved on the production hard drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system will not be interrupted and it will continue operating smoothly until the faulty drive is replaced and the info is synced on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The SSD drives that are used for holding any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data copied on this type of a disk drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive will not have an impact on the adequate operation of your websites at all. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers called checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS
The physical servers where we generate virtual private server use extremely fast SSD drives that will boost the speed of your Internet sites considerably. The drives work in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any info due to a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers use many different drives where the information is stored and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the information copied on it, that makes it much easier to restore the site content without any loss if a main drive fails. If you pick our backup service, the info will be kept on a separate machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and although there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to ensure that we will have a backup of your site content at all times. With this particular configuration your data will always be safe because it will be available on several drives.