RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on a number hard disks which function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is split into individual ones through virtualization software. In either case, identical info is stored on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data 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. These factors show that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

All content that you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be stored on fast NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to work with the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform and it adds an additional level of security for your content in addition to the real-time checksum authentication that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on a couple of disks and at least one is a parity disk - whenever info is recorded on it, an extra bit is added, so in case any drive stops working for some reason, the integrity of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is stored on the production hard drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will never be interrupted and it'll continue functioning flawlessly until the malfunctioning drive is changed and the info is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives that are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data copied on such a drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what information will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the data on the new drive shall be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't have an effect on the adequate operation of your Internet sites at all. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts that our company provides are created on physical servers which use NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one extra bit is added to the data duplicated on it and if 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 right information is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your websites will stay online as all the information will still load from at least 1 more hard drive. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be stored on standard hard disks which also operate in RAID because we would like to make sure that any kind of content you upload will be protected all of the time. Employing multiple hard drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.