Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all work as just a single unit where data is saved. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the information on all drives will be identical all the time, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may vary according to the particular setup - whether data is written on all drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The drives which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but quick NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we use. All the content that you add to the cloud website hosting account will be held on multiple drives and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced without any service disturbances and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you will never have to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is cloned on this specific hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a defective disk is replaced, the information that will be copied on it is a combination of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info is intact. During this process, your sites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you take advantage of one of our VPS server plans, any content you upload will be stored on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity so as to ensure 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 from the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also use standard hard drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so if you add this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.