RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to employ a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a configuration has two major advantages over using just a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive stops working, the data will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both executed from all the drives at the same time, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on SSD drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info which will be cloned on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to guarantee that the info that is being duplicated is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all of the copies of the files on the separate drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also use standard hard disk drives which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.