RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which makes it possible for a system to employ several hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. This kind of a setup has two huge advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive breaks down, the data will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. There're different RAID types depending on the number of drives are used, if reading and writing are both handled from all of the drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Determined by the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information saved on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks fails, your websites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the data that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information which you upload to your shared web hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all of the content which you upload will be held on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the drives is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the information that is copied to a new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID stops working as the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a hard drive stops functioning, the system can easily switch to another one instantly without service disturbances of any sort. RAID-Z adds an extra level of safety for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform together with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums so as to verify the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS

In case you employ one of our virtual private server plans, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the defective one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any probability of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ regular hard disks which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.