RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to employ several hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This type of a configuration has two key advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessible through the others, and the second is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. You can find different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both executed from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The drives that we use for storage with our revolutionary cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we use. All of the content that you upload to your shared web hosting account will be kept on multiple drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be replaced with no service interruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never need to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the operation of the sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is added, the data that will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to guarantee that the data that is being cloned is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you take advantage of one of our VPS server solutions, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk part of the RAID stops functioning, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also use standard hard disks which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.