RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on several hard disks which work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is divided into individual ones via virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same information is stored on all drives and the basic advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several 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 one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the fault tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types could differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information kept on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the bad one, the information which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file adequately and to verify the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info that you upload to your website hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - any 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 disturbing the operation of the Internet sites because the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done in order to guarantee that the information which is being cloned is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your data as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a special checksum of all the copies of the files on the separate drives in order to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts which our company offers are created on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is included in the information cloned on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your websites will still be online since all the data will still load from at least one other hard disk. If you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be kept on standard hard drives that also function in RAID as we would like to make certain that any kind of content you add will be safe and sound at all times. Using multiple drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.