Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on multiple hard disks simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all function as a single unit where your information is saved. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all of the drives is the same all the time, so even if one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes can be split between multiple drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance can vary based on the exact setup - whether data is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Hosting

All content that you upload to your new shared hosting account will be stored on fast SSD drives that function in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to use the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds an additional level of security for your content in addition to the real-time checksum validation which ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is stored on several disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is recorded on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive stops functioning for whatever reason, the integrity of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is saved on the production hard drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will never be interrupted and it'll continue operating effectively until the problematic drive is replaced and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on SSD drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the Internet sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the information that will be copied on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done so as to guarantee that the information which is being copied is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a special checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.