RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on a number hard drives that operate together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. Either way, the very same info is stored on all drives and the key advantage of employing this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synced between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors show that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types may differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information saved on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the info that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to confirm the integrity of the data duplicated on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your web hosting account along with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the information that is copied to a brand new drive in case one of the disks in the RAID fails as the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in case a drive stops functioning, the system could switch to a different one instantly without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds one more level of protection for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums so as to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you take advantage of one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also use conventional hard disks which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.