RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which makes it possible for a system to use many hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has two major advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, 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 a number of drives. You can find different RAID types in accordance with the number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both executed from all the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Hosting

Our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all hosting accounts are made employs quick NVMe drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard disks operate together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is one more level of protection for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for holding any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive will not have an impact on the adequate operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our revolutionary cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers called checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server packages, any content which you upload will be stored on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity to ensure the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk in the RAID breaks down, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the defective one, the bits of the data that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ standard hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.