A solid-state drive (SSD) is a media that uses flash modules in order to save info. The solid-state drives are still fairly new and more expensive compared to standard hard disk drives (HDD), but they're faster, so they are often used for Operating Systems and applications on both desktops and servers. An SSD is preferred because it doesn't have spinning disks which restrict its speed and may even cause overheating as it may happen with an HDD. A lot of companies work with SSDs for caching purposes, so all of the content that is accessed more often will be located on such drives, while all other content will be stored on ordinary HDDs. The main reason to use this kind of a configuration is to balance the price and overall performance of their Internet hosting platform and to decrease the load on the HDDs resulting from countless reading and writing processes.
SSD with Data Caching in Website Hosting
The cloud platform where we create website hosting accounts uses only SSD drives, so your web applications and static Internet sites will open very quickly. The SSDs are used for files, e-mails and databases, so regardless if you open a page or check for new e-mail messages through webmail, the content will load without delay. So as to offer even higher speeds, we also use a group of dedicated SSDs that work only as cache. All the content which generates a lot of traffic is copied on them automatically and is later on read from them and not from the main storage drives. Of course, that content is replaced dynamically for improved efficiency. What we achieve by doing this apart from the improved speed is reduced overall load, thus lower possibility of hardware failures, and prolonged lifespan of the primary drives, that's one more level of protection for any data that you upload to your account.
SSD with Data Caching in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you subscribe for one of our semi-dedicated server plans, we will keep your content on SSD drives and this is valid not only for the files, but also for all the databases and e-mails. Thus, your script-driven applications and webmail will load speedily. We employ dedicated SSDs for caching too. Traffic-intensive website content is duplicated automatically on these drives, so we ensure that a number of heavy Internet sites which generate a large amount of reading and writing processes shall not influence the other Internet sites that share the exact same drive. By reducing the overall system load we also boost the lifespan of the primary storage drives and decrease the potential for a disk failure, so by using SSD drives for caching purposes, we add one more level of protection for your content.