Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on multiple hard drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all function as just one single unit where your information is stored. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all the drives is exactly the same all the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also better because the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance could differ according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our innovative cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we employ. Any content that you upload to your hosting account will be saved on multiple hard drives and at least one of them will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be replaced without any service disruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never need to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type 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 defective, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the websites since the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info that will be cloned on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done so as to guarantee that the data which is being cloned is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the various drives in order to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The physical servers where we make VPS server work with super fast NVMe drives that will boost the speed of your websites substantially. The hard drives work in RAID to guarantee that you won't lose any data due to a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers take advantage of many different drives where the information is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all information copied on it, that makes it easier to restore the content without loss if a main drive stops working. In case you pick our backup service, your information will be stored on a separate machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and though there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup of your site content all of the time. With this kind of setup your data will always be safe because it will be available on many drives.