RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to employ a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This kind of a configuration has 2 major advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the info will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both handled from all the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Based on the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The advanced cloud hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are created employs quick NVMe drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disks operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your info along with the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - any time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the websites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done so as to ensure that the information which is being duplicated is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your info because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the different drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we offer are created on physical servers which employ NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is added to the info duplicated on it and in case a main disk fails, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the correct information is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will stay online because all the information will still load from at least 1 more hard disk. If you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be kept on standard disk drives which also work in RAID since we want to make sure that any sort of content you upload will be protected at all times. Using multiple hard drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.