RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to take advantage of many hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a configuration has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the data will be accessed through the remaining ones, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both performed 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. Determined by the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information kept on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops functioning, your websites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the problematic one, the data that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file correctly and to validate the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info which you upload to your hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info that will be cloned on it will be a combination between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other drives in the RAID. That is done in order to guarantee that the info which is being cloned is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

All virtual private server accounts which we offer are generated on physical servers which use NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is added to the info cloned on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the right info is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your websites will stay online because all the information will still load from at least 1 other hard drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the information will be kept on standard hard disks which also operate in RAID as we would like to make sure that any kind of site content you upload will be protected all of the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.