Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as a single unit where information is stored. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all drives will be exactly the same all the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may vary based on the specific setup - whether info is written on all of the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Hosting

The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the bad one, the data which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each file adequately and to validate the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content that you upload to your hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all of the content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info which is duplicated to a new drive in the event that one of the drives in the RAID stops functioning as the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a hard drive stops working, the system can easily switch to a different one quickly without service disturbances of any kind. RAID-Z adds one more level of security for the content that you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to authenticate the integrity of each file.


The SSD drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data which will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the correct data is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disk drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any type of unpredicted hardware malfunction.