RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to take advantage of multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This kind of a configuration has 2 huge advantages over using just a single drive to keep data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessed from the others, and the second one is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among several drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both executed from all the drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Based on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The drives that we use for storage with our top-notch cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but super fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we employ. All of the content that you upload to the cloud hosting account will be kept on multiple disk drives and at least one of them will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be replaced with no service disturbances and the info will be recovered 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 info and along with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never need to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is named RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this particular hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the data which will be copied on it is a combination of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to make sure that your info is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for an entire drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we generate virtual private servers work in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the required info is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unforeseen hardware failure.