The process of files getting corrupted caused by some hardware or software failure is known as data corruption and this is among the main problems that hosting companies face as the larger a hard disk is and the more data is stored on it, the much more likely it is for data to become corrupted. There are several fail-safes, but often the data becomes corrupted silently, so neither the file system, nor the admins notice a thing. Consequently, a corrupted file will be treated as a standard one and if the hard disk is a part of a RAID, that file will be copied on all other drives. In principle, this is done for redundancy, but in practice the damage will get even worse. The moment a given file gets corrupted, it will be partially or fully unreadable, which means that a text file will not be readable, an image file will show a random mix of colors in case it opens at all and an archive will be impossible to unpack, and you risk losing your content. Although the most widespread server file systems include various checks, they often fail to identify a problem early enough or require an extensive amount of time to check all the files and the web server will not be operational for the time being.
No Data Corruption & Data Integrity in Shared Hosting
We've dealt with the matter of silent data corruption on our shared hosting servers by using the cutting-edge Z file system, or ZFS. The latter is superior to other file systems since it is the only one on the market that checks all files in real time by using a checksum - a digital identifier that is unique for every single file. When you upload content to your account, it'll be stored on several SSD drives and regularly synchronized between them for redundancy. ZFS constantly examines the checksum of all files and in the event that any file is detected as corrupted, it is replaced instantly with a good copy from another disk. As this happens in real time, there's no risk that a bad file may remain or may be duplicated on the rest of the SSDs. ZFS needs plenty of physical memory to perform the real-time checks and the advantage of our cloud hosting platform is that we take advantage of multiple powerful servers working together. In case you host your Internet sites with us, your information will be undamaged no matter what.
No Data Corruption & Data Integrity in Semi-dedicated Servers
Your semi-dedicated server account will be shielded from silent data corruption because all of our storage servers work with the innovative ZFS file system. What makes the aforementioned unique is that it uses checksums, or digital identifiers, so as to verify the integrity of each file. When you upload content to your account, it will be saved on a couple of redundant drives operating in a RAID i.e. the files shall be the same across all disks. All of the copies of a given file will have the same checksum on all drives and ZFS will compare the checksums of the duplicates quickly, and if it identifies a mismatch, that would indicate that one of the copies is corrupted, it'll replace that file with a healthy copy from one of the other disks. Even if there's an unforeseen blackout, the data on the servers won't become corrupted and there won't be any need for a time-consuming system check which other file systems perform after some breakdown, extending the time needed for the server to go back online. ZFS is the only file system that can really protect your content from silent data corruption.