Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on multiple hard disk drives concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as one single unit where data is saved. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the info on all the drives is identical all of the time, so even if a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ based on the specific setup - whether data is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information stored on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the info that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info that you upload to your shared website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on such a disk drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what data will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive won't impact the proper operation of your websites in any respect. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our advanced cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you employ one of our VPS server solutions, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk within the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ ordinary hard drives that work in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.