Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all operate as just one single unit where your information is saved. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the data on all drives shall be identical at all times, so even in case a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also better since the reading and writing processes could be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may differ based on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all drives real-time or it's written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The drives that we use for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we employ. Any content that you upload to the shared web hosting account will be stored on multiple hard drives and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be changed with no service interruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever have to be concerned about losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the Internet sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a new drive is added, the data that will be copied on it will be a blend between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the information which is being duplicated is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your information since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers work in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive fails, it is replaced and the information that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the right data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted as the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of unexpected hardware failure.