RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on a number hard disk drives which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same data is stored on all the drives and the basic benefit of employing this kind of a setup is that if a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also enhances the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information kept on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the information which will be cloned on it will be recovered 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 bits of each file adequately and to verify the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your cloud web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your Internet sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the hard drives is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is copied to a new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning since the site content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even if a hard drive fails, the system can switch to a different one instantly without service disruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an extra level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums as a way to verify the integrity of every single file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the information that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the required data is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any unforeseen hardware failure.