RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to take advantage of many hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has two key advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive fails, the information will be accessed from the others, and the second is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. You can find different RAID types based on what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both done from all drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Based on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Website Hosting

The hard drives which we use for storage with our innovative cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but quick NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we work with. All the content that you upload to the website hosting account will be saved on multiple drives and at least one shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced with no service interruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on such a drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the problematic drive won't have an effect on the normal operation of your sites in any respect. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers identified as checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we offer are created on physical servers which use NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the info copied on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the accurate info is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will remain online as all the info will still load from at least 1 more hard drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your info will be saved on standard hard disks which also operate in RAID because we would like to make sure that any type of content you upload will be risk-free at all times. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.