RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to employ several hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. Such a configuration has 2 huge advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive breaks down, the information will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with the number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both executed from all the drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Based on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The hard drives that we employ for storage with our top-notch cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but super fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we employ. All the content that you upload to the cloud website hosting account will be kept on multiple hard disks and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be changed without any service disturbances and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done in order to guarantee the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never need to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is copied on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and if a problematic disk is replaced, the info that will be copied on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to ensure that your information is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be up and running normally because RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

In case you employ one of our virtual private server packages, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also use standard hard disk 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'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.