RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to use several hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive doesn't work, the info will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among multiple drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with the number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both performed from all of the drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Determined by the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Web Hosting

Our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are generated uses quick NVMe drives rather than the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disk drives work together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, therefore nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is another level of security for your data together with the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data cloned on such a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating normally and the faulty drive will not affect the proper operation of your sites in any way. Using 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 as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers known as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you employ one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity 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 from the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the defective one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ standard hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.