RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which permits a system to take advantage of several hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. This type of a configuration has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessible from the others, and the second is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among multiple drives. There are different RAID types depending on how many drives are employed, if reading and writing are both handled from all drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Determined by the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The cutting-edge cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created employs fast NVMe drives rather than the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disks work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, so nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is another level of security for your data in addition to the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is copied on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a defective disk is replaced, the data that will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to guarantee that your information is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without service disruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the data which will be copied on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the correct info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disk drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unexpected hardware failure.