Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard disks concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all work as just one single unit where your information is stored. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the information on all drives shall be the same at all times, so even in case some drive fails for some reason, the data will still be present on the other drives. The overall performance is also better as the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance could differ based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data kept on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the malfunctioning one, the info that will be duplicated 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 authenticate the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content you upload to your cloud web hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for storing any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what information will be cloned on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue working adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the adequate operation of your sites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers function in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. If a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information that will be copied on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the needed info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sudden hardware failure.