RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is split into individual ones via virtualization software. Either way, the same information is kept on all the drives and the main benefit of using this kind of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data will still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort 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 additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the information that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each file correctly and to validate the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information you upload to your cloud hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all the content 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 employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info which is cloned to a brand new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning because the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information 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 another one immediately without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud web hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to validate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we generate virtual private servers function in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive fails, it is changed and the info which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the needed information is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any unpredicted hardware failure.