RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on several hard drives that function together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is split into independent ones via virtualization software. In either case, the same data is stored on all of the drives and the basic advantage of using this kind of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types can vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information kept on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the information which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every file properly and to verify the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information which you upload to your shared hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all the disk 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 - any time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the Internet sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info which will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done to ensure that the info that is being duplicated is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the various drives so as to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers that employ NVMe drives working in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is included in the info duplicated on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the right data is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your websites will still be online because all the data will still load from at least one more hard disk. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your information will be stored on standard disk drives which also operate in RAID because we want to make sure that any kind of site content you add will be protected at all times. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.