Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on a number of hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all perform as just a single unit where information is stored. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the information on all the drives will be the same all of the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ according to the particular setup - whether information is written on all of the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Hosting

All the content that you upload to your new hosting account will be placed on quick NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. This setup is built to use the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform and it adds an additional level of protection for your content on top of the real-time checksum authentication that ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the info is stored on a number of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever information is written on it, an additional bit is added, so if any drive stops working for whatever reason, the stability of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is kept on the production drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system won't be interrupted and it will continue functioning efficiently until the malfunctioning drive is replaced and the data is synchronized on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be defective, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the work of the Internet sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the data that will be copied on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done in order to ensure that the info which is being copied is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your data as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

All virtual private server accounts which our company offers are made on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives working in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the info duplicated on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the correct data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will stay online since all the info will still load from at least 1 more hard disk. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the information will be saved on standard hard drives that also function in RAID as we want to make sure that any sort of site content you upload will be protected all of the time. Using multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.