RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on several hard drives that function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is split into independent ones through virtualization software. In either case, the same information is stored on all drives and the main advantage of employing such a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's written 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 can vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information kept on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the information that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives which are used for saving any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what info will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. During the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive won't impact the normal operation of your websites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts that we provide are made on physical servers which use NVMe drives working in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is included in the data duplicated on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will stay online since all the data will still load from at least one other hard drive. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the information will be kept on standard hard drives which also function in RAID since we would like to make certain that any website content you upload will be protected all the time. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.