RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on a number hard disks which operate together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same data is saved on all of the drives and the main benefit of using this kind of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the 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 suggest that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may vary.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are made uses super fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disk drives operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, thus practically nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is one more level of protection for your data in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the Internet sites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is added, the information which will be copied on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done to ensure that the info which is being copied is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your data since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the different drives in order to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

All virtual private server accounts that we provide are generated on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is included in the data cloned on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the correct information is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will remain online since all the data will still load from at least 1 other disk drive. In case you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the data will be kept on standard disk drives that also work in RAID since we would like to make certain that any site content you add will be risk-free at all times. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.