RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on several hard drives which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into independent ones using virtualization software. Either way, the very same data is kept on all the drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors show that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The drives that we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud Internet hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we use. All the content that you add to the shared web hosting account will be kept on multiple hard drives and at least 1 shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed without any service interruptions and the info 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 to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about the loss of any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any data is duplicated on this special hard drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a problematic disk is replaced, the data which will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the remaining drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally because RAID-Z makes it possible for an entire drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts that we provide are made on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is included in the info cloned on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the right information is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your websites will remain online as all the info will still load from at least one other hard disk. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be stored on standard hard disks that also operate in RAID since we want to make certain that any website content you add will be risk-free at all times. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.