RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on several hard disk drives which work together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. In either case, the very same data is saved on all drives and the key advantage of using such a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also enhances the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors suggest that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types could differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but extremely fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we employ. All the content that you add to the shared web hosting account will be held on multiple drives and at least one of them shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed with no service disturbances and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never need to worry about losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be copied on the latter shall 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 functioning normally and the malfunctioning drive won't have an impact on the proper operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we provide are created on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the data duplicated on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the accurate information is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your websites will still be online as all the data will still load from at least one more hard drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your data will be stored on standard disk drives which also operate in RAID since we would like to make sure that any type of site content you add will be safe and sound all of the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.