Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as a single unit where your information is stored. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the information on all of the drives shall be the same all the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of 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 particular setup - whether data is written on all of the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are made employs super fast SSD drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disk drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, so nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is one more level of protection for your information in addition to the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is copied on this special hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the information which will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining drives 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 up and running normally because RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever have to worry about the integrity of your files.