Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on a number of hard disks simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is the fact that they all function as one single unit where info is kept. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives shall be identical at all times, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary based on the exact setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The disk drives which we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but super fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we work with. Any content that you add to the shared web hosting account will be held on multiple drives and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced with no service interruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you won't ever have to be concerned about losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is copied on this specific disk drive, one more bit is added to it and if a problematic disk is changed, the data which 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. We do this to ensure that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your sites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you'll never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which our company offers are made on physical servers that employ NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is added to the data cloned on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the accurate info is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your sites will stay online as all the data will still load from at least 1 other drive. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your information will be kept on standard disk drives which also function in RAID because we would like to make sure that any sort of site content you upload will be protected all the time. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.