RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on a number hard disks which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is divided into independent ones using virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same information is saved on all drives and the key advantage of employing this type of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors indicate that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

All the content that you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be saved on quick NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to work with the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds another level of protection for your content on top of the real-time checksum verification which ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is stored on a number of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is recorded on it, an extra bit is added, so if any drive stops working for some reason, the stability of the info can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is kept on the production hard disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will not be interrupted and it will continue working effectively until the malfunctioning drive is replaced and the info is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the sites as the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info which will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to ensure that the information that is being cloned is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the various drives in order to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

If you use one of our virtual private server plans, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk within the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the faulty one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ conventional hard drives that function in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.