RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on multiple hard drives which function together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is split into independent ones through virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same info is saved on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing such a setup is that if a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also improves the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data 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. All these factors show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can differ.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared web hosting accounts are generated employs super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard drives function together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus absolutely nothing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is one more level of security for your info along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the work of the Internet sites because the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info which will be copied on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the info which is being cloned is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your info since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all of the copies of the files on the different drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

All virtual private server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is added to the data duplicated on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your Internet sites will still be online since all the information will still load from at least one other drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your information will be stored on standard hard disks that also function in RAID because we would like to make sure that any type of site content you add will be safe and sound all of the time. Working with multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.