RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to take advantage of multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a configuration has two major advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive doesn't work, the data will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are used, if reading and writing are both done from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but super fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you add to your hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be changed with no service disruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you will never have to be concerned about losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the operation of the Internet sites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the data which will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done to guarantee that the data that is being duplicated is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all the copies of the files on the various drives to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

All virtual private server accounts that we offer are created on physical servers which employ NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is included in the data duplicated on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your Internet sites will remain online as all the info will still load from at least one other drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the data will be saved on standard hard drives which also work in RAID since we want to make sure that any site content you add will be protected all the time. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.