Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard disks concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what’s common between them is that they all perform as just a single unit where info is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives will be identical all of the time, so even in case some drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ based on the specific setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info kept on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the info which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every file adequately and to validate the integrity of the data duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info which you upload to your cloud hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all of the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all of the content that you upload will be held on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is cloned to a brand new drive in the event that one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning since the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in case a drive fails, the system could switch to another one instantly without service disturbances of any sort. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of every single file.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server plans, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is intended for parity to ensure the integrity of your information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk in the RAID breaks down, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the faulty one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ standard hard drives which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.