Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard disks concurrently. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what is common between them is the fact that they all work as a single unit where information is saved. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the data on all the drives shall be identical all the time, so even if a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes could be split between multiple drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance can vary based on the particular setup - whether data is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information kept on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the bad one, the info that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file adequately and to confirm the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this special drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the information that will be copied on it is a mix of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that your info is intact. During this process, your sites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z enables 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. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts that our company provides are generated on physical servers that employ NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is added to the data cloned on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the correct info is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will stay online as all the information will still load from at least 1 more hard disk. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the information will be kept on standard disk drives which also operate in RAID as we want to make sure that any type of content you upload will be safe and sound all the time. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.