RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on a number hard disk drives that work together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is split into separate ones using virtualization software. Either way, the very same info is kept on all drives and the main benefit of using this kind of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also improves the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced 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 mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information saved on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops functioning, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the information which will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content which you upload to your cloud web hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the Internet sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the data which will be copied on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data kept on the other drives in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the info that is being duplicated is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts that we offer are created on physical servers that use NVMe drives working in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is included in the info duplicated on it and in case 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 info is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your websites will still be online as all the data will still load from at least one more hard drive. In case you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be stored on standard hard disks which also function in RAID as we would like to make sure that any type of content you add will be safe and sound all the time. Working with multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.