RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disks that function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into individual ones via virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same data is stored on all of the drives and the key benefit of employing this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the info 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 imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are made uses fast SSD drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard disks operate together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your info together with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The SSD drives that are used for storing any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data copied on such a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information 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 data on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the normal operation of your websites in any way. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers identified as checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.