Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all operate as one single unit where info is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the information on all the drives is identical all the time, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance may vary based on the specific setup - whether data is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all cloud website hosting accounts are made uses super fast NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disk drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, therefore not a thing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is one more level of security for your info along with the revolutionary ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data copied on such a drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what info will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the problematic drive will not impact the adequate operation of your sites by any means. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers called checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is changed and the information which will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the needed info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.