RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on a number hard disks which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is divided into independent ones through virtualization software. In either case, the same info is stored on all of the drives and the key advantage of using such a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also enhances the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can differ.
RAID in Hosting
Our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform where all hosting accounts are generated uses fast SSD drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disks function together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case 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, therefore nothing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is one more level of protection for your information along with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the 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 Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is cloned on this specific disk drive, one more bit is included to it and if a problematic disk is changed, the info that will be copied 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 data is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without causing any service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS Servers
The physical servers where we create VPS server use high-speed SSD drives that will boost the speed of your Internet sites significantly. The drives work in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any info because of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers use multiple drives where the info 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 easier to recover the website content without any loss if a main drive breaks down. If you choose our backup service, the information will be stored on an independent 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 make sure that we will have a backup copy of your website content all of the time. With this kind of configuration your data will always be safe as it will be available on multiple disk drives.