RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to employ several hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. Such a configuration has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the information will be accessible from the others, and the second one is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. You can find different RAID types depending on how many drives are employed, if reading and writing are both executed from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

Our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud website hosting accounts are generated employs super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard drives function together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service interruptions. This is another level of security for your information in addition to the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data cloned on such a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be cloned on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive shall be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the faulty drive won't affect the normal operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. If a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the information which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the required information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unexpected hardware failure.