RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on multiple hard disks which function together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is split into separate ones using virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same data is kept on all of the drives and the main advantage of using this kind of a setup is that if a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors imply that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are created employs quick NVMe drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disk drives operate together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that practically nothing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is another level of security for your info along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any data is cloned on this special hard drive, one more bit is added to it and if a faulty disk is replaced, the information that will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to guarantee that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your sites will be up and running normally since RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts that our company offers are generated on physical servers that use NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the info cloned on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the accurate data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your Internet sites will remain online since 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 saved on standard hard drives which also work in RAID since we want to make certain that any type of content you add will be safe and sound all the time. Using multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.