RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on multiple hard drives which function together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. In either case, the same data is saved on all of the drives and the basic benefit of employing such a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Using a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synced between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors suggest that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The drives which we use for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we employ. All of the content that you upload to your shared hosting account will be saved on multiple disk drives and at least one shall be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be changed without service disruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your Internet sites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content that you upload will be held on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info which is copied to a brand new drive in case one of the drives in the RAID stops working because the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a drive fails, the system can easily switch to another one instantly without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to validate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive fails, it is changed and the info which will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the right info is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disk drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unpredicted hardware failure.