RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on several hard disks which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. In either case, the same information is kept on all the drives and the key advantage of using such a setup is that in the event that a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

Our state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud website hosting accounts are generated employs quick NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard disks operate together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of protection for your info together with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be defective, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the work of the sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the info that will be cloned on it will be a combination between the information on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done to ensure that the data that is being duplicated is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the separate drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we create VPS servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the right data is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unpredicted hardware malfunction.