Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is the fact that they all operate as just a single unit where information is saved. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives shall be exactly the same at all times, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the info will still be present on the remaining drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well because the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance could differ based on the exact setup - whether information is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information stored on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the malfunctioning one, the information that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file adequately and to verify the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information that you upload to your web hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each file on all of the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your websites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, all of the content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data that is copied to a new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning as the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even if a hard drive fails, the system could switch to another one quickly without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an extra level of safety for the content which you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we set up VPS servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the data that will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the correct data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any type of unforeseen hardware failure.