Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all operate as just one single unit where information is saved. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the information on all drives is identical all the time, so even in the event that some drive fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance may vary depending on the specific setup - whether data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

All content that you upload to your new cloud web hosting account will be saved on quick NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to employ the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds an additional level of security for your content in addition to the real-time checksum verification that ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is saved on a number of disks and at least one is a parity disk - whenever data is written on it, an extra bit is added, so if any drive stops working for whatever reason, the stability of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is stored on the production drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system won't be interrupted and it'll continue functioning smoothly until the problematic drive is replaced and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the data that will be cloned on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the info which is being cloned is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your data because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the separate drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you take advantage of one of our VPS server plans, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk within the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use regular hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backups, so if you add this service to your VPS package, your content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.