RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on multiple hard drives that function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is split into separate ones via virtualization software. In any case, identical info is kept on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also enhances the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synced between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are created employs super fast SSD drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disk drives work together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the other drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done 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 recorded on the other ones, thus not a single thing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your data in addition to the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The SSD drives which are used for holding any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this type of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what data will be copied on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive won't have an effect on the adequate operation of your Internet sites by any means. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums to prevent silent data corruption.