Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on a number of hard disks at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is that they all perform as one single unit where your information is stored. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the info on all of the drives will be exactly the same all of the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the other drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ based on the specific setup - whether data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data stored on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the info that will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file properly and to confirm the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the content that you upload to your cloud web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, all of the content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the hard drives is used for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the information which is copied to a new drive if one of the hard drives in the RAID stops working as the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even if a drive stops functioning, the system can switch to another one promptly without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of safety for the content that you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums in order to authenticate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive stops working, it is changed and the information that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the required info is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disk drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sudden hardware malfunction.