RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to use many hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. Such a configuration has two huge advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There're different RAID types depending on what amount of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both performed from all drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. According to the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the data that will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file correctly and to validate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info which you upload to your cloud hosting account together with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data duplicated on such a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the problematic drive will not have an effect on the normal operation of your sites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers referred to as checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

All virtual private server accounts that we provide are created on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the data duplicated on it and in case a main disk fails, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the correct information is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will stay online as all the info will still load from at least 1 other hard drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be stored on standard hard disks that also function in RAID because we want to make certain that any kind of content you add will be safe and sound at all times. Working with multiple hard drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.