RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on a number hard disk drives that function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is split into individual ones using virtualization software. In either case, the same data is stored on all drives and the basic advantage of employing this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synced between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors indicate that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all shared web hosting accounts are generated employs fast SSD drives as opposed to the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disk drives work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore not a single thing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your information along with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this particular drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a defective disk is changed, the information which will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that your info is intact. During this process, your websites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for an entire drive to fail without any service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.