RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on several hard drives that work together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is divided into separate ones via virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same data is stored on all of the drives and the key advantage of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also improves 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 hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synced between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors suggest that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The revolutionary cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created employs fast NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard drives function together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, therefore not a thing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of protection for your information in addition to the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is called 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 copied on this special drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a faulty disk is replaced, the info that will be copied on it is a combination of the data on the other disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to make sure that your information is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you'll never need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers function in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the data which will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the correct information is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.