RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to take advantage of many hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a configuration has two key advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, the data will be accessible through the others, and the second one is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There're different RAID types based on how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all of the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. According to the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

The hard disks that we use for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you upload to your web hosting account will be saved on multiple drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be replaced without service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never need to be concerned about losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all of the content which you upload will be held on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the drives is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is duplicated to a new drive if one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning as the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a drive stops working, the system can switch to another one immediately without service disruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to verify the integrity of every single file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the data that will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the needed data is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of sudden hardware malfunction.