RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disks which function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is split into separate ones through virtualization software. Either way, the very same info is stored on all drives and the basic benefit of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the other ones. Using a RAID also enhances the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors mean that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may vary.

RAID in Website Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info saved on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the malfunctioning one, the info that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of each file correctly and to verify the integrity of the information copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk happens to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the websites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the info which will be cloned on it will be a combination between the data on the parity disk and data saved on the other drives in the RAID. That is done so as to ensure that the data that is being cloned is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The physical servers where we create virtual private server employ super fast NVMe drives which will increase the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The hard disks work in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any info due to a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers use multiple drives where the data is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the data copied on it, which makes it easier to restore the content without any loss in case a main drive stops working. If you choose our backup service, your info will be stored on an independent machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and even though there is no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup of your content all of the time. With this configuration your information will always be safe since it will be available on many drives.