RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on several hard drives that operate together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is divided into different ones via virtualization software. In either case, the same data is saved on all drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also enhances the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can vary.

RAID in Web Hosting

All of the content that you upload to your new web hosting account will be saved on fast NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. This setup is built to use the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds another level of protection for your site content on top of the real-time checksum verification that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is saved on a couple of disks and at least one of them is a parity disk - whenever data is written on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive fails for some reason, the integrity of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is stored on the production disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system won't be interrupted and it will continue functioning effectively until the faulty drive is changed and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data duplicated on this type of a disk drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be copied on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the faulty drive will not have an impact on the normal operation of your Internet sites in any way. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server packages, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least a single drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk from 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 copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ regular hard disks that work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.