Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as just one single unit where info is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all of the drives shall be identical all the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ depending on the particular setup - whether info is written on all drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are created uses super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disk drives operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is another level of protection for your information along with the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the information that is cloned to a brand new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning because the site content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in case a disk drive stops functioning, the system can switch to another one right away without service disturbances of any kind. RAID-Z adds one more level of safety for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to validate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we create VPS servers function in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information which will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the correct data is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of sudden hardware malfunction.