Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is the fact that they all work as one single unit where information is saved. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the info on all drives shall be the same at all times, so even in case one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the other drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes could be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance could differ according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Hosting

Our advanced cloud hosting platform where all hosting accounts are generated employs fast NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disks operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, thus nothing will be lost and there won't be any service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your info in addition to the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all of the 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 web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is named RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any data is copied on this specific hard drive, one more bit is included to it and if a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the info that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the data is intact. During this process, your sites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without service disruptions and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts which we offer are made on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the information cloned on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the correct information is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your websites will stay online since all the information will still load from at least 1 more drive. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be saved on standard hard disks which also function in RAID because we would like to make sure that any site content you upload will be risk-free all the time. Working with multiple hard drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.