Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on a number of hard disk drives 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 operate as just one single unit where information is kept. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives is exactly the same all the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for some reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes can be split between multiple drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may differ according to the particular setup - whether your data is written on all drives real-time or it's written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are created uses fast NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disk drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, thus not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is another level of security for your info in addition to the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least 1 of the hard drives is used for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data that is cloned to a new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning because the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a disk drive stops functioning, the system can switch to a different one immediately without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums so as to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you take advantage of one of our VPS server packages, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk within the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also use conventional hard disks that work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.