RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to take advantage of multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. This type of a configuration has 2 huge advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the data will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. You can find different RAID types based on what amount of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

Our revolutionary cloud hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are generated uses super fast NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, therefore absolutely nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is an additional level of protection for your data in addition to the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be faulty, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the websites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is added, the information which will be cloned on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other drives in the RAID. This is done so as to guarantee that the info which is being copied is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your information since the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all of the copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server plans, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk within the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ ordinary hard disks which function in RAID for storing backups, so in case you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.