RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to take advantage of several hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has two key advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the information will be accessible through the others, and the second is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There are different RAID types based on the number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both performed from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Web Hosting

The hard disks which we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we use. All of the content that you upload to your web hosting account will be kept on multiple drives and at least 1 will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without any service disruptions 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 other disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never need to be concerned about the loss of any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives that are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what info will be duplicated on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive will not have an impact on the proper operation of your websites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers called checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you use one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also employ regular hard disk drives which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.