Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on a number of hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is the fact that they all function as just a single unit where your information is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the information on all the drives will be identical all of the time, so even if one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also better because the reading and writing processes could be split between multiple drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Website Hosting

The disk drives which we employ for storage with our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you add to your website hosting account will be saved on multiple hard drives and at least one of them will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever have to be concerned about losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this special drive, one more bit is added to it and if a problematic disk is changed, the data which will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to guarantee that the data is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

If you employ one of our virtual private server packages, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk inside the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the data that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use conventional hard drives which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.