RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on several hard disks that operate together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case a single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. In any case, the same information is stored on all of the drives and the basic advantage of employing such a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types could differ.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information located on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the data which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every file correctly and to validate the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content that you upload to your shared website hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is named RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is copied on this particular disk drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the data which will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the remaining hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to ensure that the data is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally since RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without causing any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts that our company offers are created on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is included in the data copied on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the correct data is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your sites will remain online because all the information will still load from at least one other hard disk. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the info will be stored on standard hard disks that also work in RAID as we would like to make sure that any kind of website content you upload will be safe and sound all of the time. Using multiple hard drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.