RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on a number hard drives which operate together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is split into individual ones through virtualization software. In any case, the same data is kept on all drives and the key benefit of employing such a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created employs quick NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disks work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, therefore not a single thing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is an additional level of security for your info along with the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is kept on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the work of the Internet sites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the data that will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other drives in the RAID. That is done to ensure that the info which is being duplicated is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your data since the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a special checksum of all copies of the files on the various drives so as to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the info which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the right info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of sudden hardware failure.