RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives that work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into separate ones through virtualization software. In either case, identical info is stored on all the drives and the basic advantage of using this kind of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also improves the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synced between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where data located on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks fails, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the malfunctioning one, the data that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file properly and to verify the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the content which you upload to your cloud web hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is copied on this special drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the data that will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that your data is intact. During this process, your websites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without causing any service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

In case you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which operate in RAID. At least a single drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the data that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ ordinary hard drives which operate in RAID for storing backups, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.