RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to use several hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has 2 key advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second one is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There're different RAID types depending on what amount of drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both handled from all the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The revolutionary cloud web hosting platform where all shared web hosting accounts are made employs fast NVMe drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard drives work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it is duplicated 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 info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, which means that practically nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is another level of protection for your information along with the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data copied on such a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what info will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the normal operation of your websites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers named checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server plans, any content which you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID breaks down, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning 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 potential for corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ conventional hard disks which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.