RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to take advantage of a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has two major advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive breaks down, the information will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There're different RAID types depending on how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both performed from all drives at the same time, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Determined by the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Web Hosting

All content which you upload to your new web hosting account will be saved on fast NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. This setup is built to use the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds one more level of protection for your content on top of the real-time checksum authentication that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is saved on a number of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is written on it, an additional bit is added, so if any drive stops working for some reason, the integrity of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is kept on the production hard disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system won't be interrupted and it will continue functioning efficiently until the faulty drive is replaced and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue working adequately and the problematic drive will not have an impact on the adequate operation of your websites by any means. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers called checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

In case you use one of our virtual private server solutions, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk from the RAID stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the defective one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any probability of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ ordinary hard disk drives that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.