RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which permits a system to take advantage of multiple hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This kind of a configuration has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the data will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. You can find different RAID types depending on the number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all of 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 so on. Determined by the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended 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 information 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 data that will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to verify the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info which you upload to your cloud hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the operation of the websites because the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a new drive is included, the info that will be copied on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the data which is being cloned is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your info since the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all of the copies of the files on the various drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts that we provide are made on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is included in the information cloned on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the accurate information is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your websites will stay online since all the data will still load from at least one other disk drive. If you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your data will be saved on standard hard drives which also operate in RAID as we would like to make certain that any type of content you upload will be risk-free at all times. Using multiple hard drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.