RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives that work together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is divided into independent ones using virtualization software. In any case, the very same information is kept on all the drives and the main benefit of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also improves 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 drives are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors mean that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is created 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 kept on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the info that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content which you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is stored on NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the Internet sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info that will be copied on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the info which is being cloned is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we provide are created on physical servers which employ NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the info cloned on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the correct info is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will still be online as all the data will still load from at least one more hard disk. In case you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the info will be stored on standard disk drives which also operate in RAID since we would like to make sure that any website content you add will be protected all the time. Using multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.