RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disks that operate together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into separate ones through virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same data is stored on all the drives and the key benefit of using such a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors mean that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The advanced cloud hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are created uses super fast NVMe drives rather than the traditional HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disk drives function together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, so not a thing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is an additional level of security for your data in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea 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 because the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a hard drive fails, the system could switch to another one immediately without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we provide are made on physical servers which employ NVMe drives working in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the data cloned 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 right info is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your Internet sites will stay online since all the info will still load from at least 1 more disk drive. In case you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the information will be stored on standard disk drives that also work in RAID since we would like to make sure that any site content you upload will be protected all of the time. Using multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.