RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard drives which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is split into different ones through virtualization software. In any case, the same information is stored on all of the drives and the basic advantage of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info kept on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the info that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the information copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information that you upload to your web hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, any content that you upload will be held on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info which is duplicated to a new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID fails because the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even in case a hard drive stops functioning, the system can easily switch to a different one quickly without service disturbances of any sort. RAID-Z adds one more level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums to verify the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS

In case you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk part of the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use regular hard drives that function in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS plan, 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 breakdowns.