RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives that operate together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. In any case, the very same information is stored on all of the drives and the main benefit of employing such a setup is that if a drive fails, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information located on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the information which will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file properly and to verify the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content you upload to your shared web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives which are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data cloned on this kind of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what information will be cloned on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the data on the new drive will be correct. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not have an impact on the adequate operation of your sites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The physical servers where we generate virtual private server work with high-speed NVMe drives that will increase the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The hard disks operate in RAID to make sure that you will not lose any information because of a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers employ a variety of drives where the info is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the information copied on it, which makes it much easier to recover the content without any loss in case a main drive fails. If you take advantage of our backup service, the info will be stored on an individual machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to make sure that we will have a backup copy of your site content all the time. With this setup your information will always be safe because it will be available on multiple disk drives.