RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard drives that function together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is split into different ones using virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same data is stored on all of the drives and the main benefit of using this type of a setup is that if a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also enhances the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors show that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where data stored on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the bad one, the information that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the information from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of each file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your shared hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be defective, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the websites because the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the information which will be copied on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the info that is being cloned is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your info since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all of the copies of the files on the separate drives so as to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive fails, it is changed and the info that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the right data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disk drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any unpredicted hardware failure.