Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all work as just one single unit where data is saved. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all of the drives shall be exactly the same all the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance is also better as the reading and writing processes could be split between multiple drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ according to the specific setup - whether data is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

Our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared website hosting accounts are made employs super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard disks operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data 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 be no service disorders. This is one more level of protection for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for keeping any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a disk drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't impact the normal operation of your Internet sites by any means. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers referred to as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server solutions, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least 1 drive is used 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 in the RAID breaks down, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use ordinary hard disks that work in RAID for storing backups, so in case you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.