RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on multiple hard disk drives that work together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into separate ones via virtualization software. Either way, the same info is kept on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors mean that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types may differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the malfunctioning one, the info which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to validate the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content that you upload to your web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any data is cloned on this specific disk drive, one more bit is added to it and if a defective disk is changed, the info which will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the information is intact. During this process, your websites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you take advantage of one of our VPS server solutions, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk from the RAID stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ conventional hard disks which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS package, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.