RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables 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 data on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has 2 huge advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, the information will be accessed through the others, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among multiple drives. You can find different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are used, 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. Depending on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The drives that we use for storage with our top-notch cloud hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we use. All of the content that you upload to your shared hosting account will be stored on multiple hard drives and at least 1 will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be replaced without service interruptions and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you will never need to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is copied on this special drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the information that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that your information is intact. During this process, your sites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk inside the RAID stops functioning, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ standard hard disks which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.