RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to employ a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. Such a configuration has two huge advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessible through the others, and the second is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among different drives. There are different RAID types depending on what number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both performed from all the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Based on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are created employs quick NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disks operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, thus not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is one more level of security for your information along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type which we use 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 employed as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this particular hard drive, one more bit is added to it and if a defective disk is replaced, the info that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that your info is intact. During this process, your websites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS

In case you use one of our virtual private server packages, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the faulty one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ conventional hard drives which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you add this service to your VPS package, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.