RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to use many hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This kind of a setup has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessible through the others, and the second one is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There are different RAID types based on what number of drives are used, if reading and writing are both handled from all of the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are made uses quick NVMe drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, so nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is another level of protection for your info along with the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this special drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a problematic 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 ensure that the info is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have 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 which operate in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the defective one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ ordinary hard disk drives that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS package, 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 failures.