RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to take advantage of several hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. Such a configuration has two huge advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive doesn't work, the data will be accessible from the others, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both executed from all the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

Our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are made employs fast NVMe drives as opposed to the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard disk drives operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some 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 recorded on the other ones, therefore not a single thing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is one more level of security for your data together with the revolutionary ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives which are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining disks 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 functioning normally and the faulty drive will not impact the normal operation of your Internet sites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers known as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you use one of our virtual private server plans, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID breaks down, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also employ regular hard drives that work in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.