Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all work as a single unit where information is stored. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the information on all drives shall be exactly the same at all times, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is enhanced as well since 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 functionality and fault tolerance may differ based on the particular setup - whether data is written on all drives in real time or it's written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data located on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the malfunctioning one, the info which will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info which you upload to your cloud web hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any data is duplicated on this particular disk drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the information that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that your info is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be working normally as RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we provide are made on physical servers which use NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is included in the information cloned on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the right information is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your websites will still be online since all the data will still load from at least 1 more hard disk. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your info will be kept on standard hard disks which also operate in RAID as we would like to make sure that any site content you upload will be risk-free at all times. Working with multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.