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 one single logical unit. Simply put, all the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This kind of a setup has two huge advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the information will be accessed from the others, and the second one is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with the number of drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both done from all of the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. According to the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Hosting

The disk drives which we use for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system that we employ. All the content that you upload to your hosting account will be saved on multiple hard disks and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced without any service disruptions and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you will never need to concern yourself with the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the operation of the sites as the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the data that will be copied on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done so as to ensure that the data which is being cloned is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your data since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the various drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up VPS servers function in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the data that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the required info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.