RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on multiple hard disks which function together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case a single drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. Either way, identical info is saved on all the drives and the key benefit of employing such a setup is that if a drive stops working, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synced between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may vary.

RAID in Web Hosting

The hard drives which we use for storage with our innovative 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 use. All the content that you add to the web hosting account will be stored on multiple hard drives and at least one of them will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific 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 without any service disturbances and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about the loss of any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and if a defective disk is changed, the information that will be copied on it is a combination of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to guarantee that the information is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without causing any service disruptions and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

If you use one of our virtual private server packages, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any probability of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use standard hard disks that function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.