RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to employ many hard drives as one single logical unit. Put simply, all the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This type of a configuration has two key advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive fails, the info will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second one is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are employed, if reading and writing are both handled from all the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Determined by the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the information which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file adequately and to authenticate the integrity of the information copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your cloud website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a configuration is used for parity - any time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk happens to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the websites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a combination between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done in order to guarantee that the data that is being duplicated is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your data because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all of the copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk part of the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also use standard hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.