RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to use multiple hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. Such a setup has 2 huge advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive breaks down, the information will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second one is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among different drives. There are different RAID types depending on what amount of drives are used, if reading and writing are both executed from all of the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Depending on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Website Hosting

The advanced cloud hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are created employs fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disks work together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service interruptions. This is an additional level of protection for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data cloned on this type of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue working adequately and the faulty drive won't have an impact on the adequate operation of your Internet sites by any means. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our advanced cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

All virtual private server accounts which our company offers are created on physical servers that use NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is included in the data copied on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the right info is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will remain online since all the info will still load from at least 1 other hard disk. In case you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the data will be stored on standard hard disks that also operate in RAID because we want to make certain that any content you upload will be protected all the time. Using multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.