RAID Server Hosting

Q. What is a ‘RAID’ server ? Why should I opt for RAID Servers ?

Ans: RAID stands for ‘Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks’. It is a technique for using multiple hard drives to provide fault tolerance. Normally, WebHosting UK configure systems with 2 hard drives to use RAID 1 disk mirroring. All data is written to both drives simultaneously. Although at WebHosting UK we only use high quality hardware, the worst can occasionally happen and hard drives do sometimes fail. With RAID 1, if one of the drives fails the system can continue to run normally with just the remaining hard drive. We can then schedule a mutually convenient time to replace the failed hard drive, meaning minimal downtime for your server. Without RAID, a single hard drive failure could result in several days downtime in the worst case scenario that it was necessary to reinstall the operating system from scratch. Please note that on a RAID 1 system, the storage capacity is effectively halved i.e. a pair of 160 GB hard drives will give you 160 GB of storage space, not 320 GB. If you have more advanced requirements, we are also able to do custom RAID 5 systems with 3 or more hard drives. For more information just contact our sales department through helpdesk or live chat.