RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that makes it possible for a system to employ a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a setup has two key advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive breaks down, the data will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among multiple drives. There're different RAID types depending on what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both executed from all the drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Determined by the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information stored on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the data which will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file correctly and to verify the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info that you upload to your cloud hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info that is cloned to a new drive if one of the hard drives in the RAID stops working since the website content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in case a drive fails, the system can easily switch to another one quickly without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an extra level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to verify the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server plans, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also employ ordinary hard drives which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.