RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to employ a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has two key advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive fails, the information will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among several drives. There are different RAID types based on what amount of drives are used, if reading and writing are both handled from all the drives concurrently, if 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 exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Hosting

The hard disks which we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but super fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we work with. All the content that you upload to the hosting account will be kept on multiple disk drives and at least one shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be replaced without service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever need to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all of the content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the drives is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info which is duplicated to a brand new drive if one of the disks in the RAID fails since the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in case a disk drive fails, the system could switch to a different one instantly without service disruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an additional level of safety for the content which you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the info which will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the needed information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any sort of unexpected hardware malfunction.