Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on a number of hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all function as a single unit where data is stored. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all of the drives will be identical all the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance can vary based on the exact setup - whether data is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Web Hosting

The cutting-edge cloud hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are generated uses quick NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard disks work together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, therefore nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is another level of security for your information in addition to the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any data is cloned on this special drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a faulty disk is changed, the info that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to guarantee that your data is intact. During this process, your websites will be working normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without causing any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we set up VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is changed and the info that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the correct information is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable Internet hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unexpected hardware malfunction.