Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard drives concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as a single unit where information is saved. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives will be exactly the same all of the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes could be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may vary depending on the particular setup - whether information is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Web Hosting

The hard disks that we use for storage with our revolutionary cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we use. Any content that you upload to the web hosting account will be kept on multiple hard disks and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be replaced without service interruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never need to be concerned about losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this specific hard drive, one more bit is included to it and if a defective disk is changed, the data which will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be up and running normally since RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without causing any service disturbances and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall 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 generate VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the right data is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sudden hardware failure.