RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on a number hard disk drives that work together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is divided into separate ones through virtualization software. In either case, the same information is kept on all of the drives and the basic benefit of employing such a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also improves the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are created employs quick NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disks function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done 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, thus not a single thing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is another level of security for your data along with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is 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 duplicated on this particular drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a faulty disk is changed, the data which will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z makes it possible for an entire drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID fails, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ regular hard disk drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.