RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disk drives that function together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is divided into different ones via virtualization software. In any case, the same data is saved on all of the drives and the key benefit of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, 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 couple of drives. There are several types of RAID based 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's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data located on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the info that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content you upload to your shared web hosting account together with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all of the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any kind of data is copied on this particular drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a problematic disk is replaced, the info that will be cloned 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 make sure that the information is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be working normally since RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. If a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the information which will be copied on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the required data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unforeseen hardware failure.