RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on several hard disks which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is divided into separate ones through virtualization software. In any case, identical info is saved on all of the drives and the key advantage of employing such a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also improves the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synchronized 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 show that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info located on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the data that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information which you upload to your cloud hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the websites as the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the information which will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to ensure that the information which is being duplicated is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your information since the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all copies of the files on the different drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

If you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk from the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also use regular hard disk drives which function in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.