Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is the fact that they all function as just one single unit where information is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives will be the same all of the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the other drives. The overall performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes can be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance could differ according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information located on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the data which will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file properly and to confirm the integrity of the information copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information which you upload to your shared hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk happens to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the operation of the Internet sites because the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the data that will be cloned on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other drives in the RAID. That is done to ensure that the data that is being duplicated is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your data as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all of the copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

If you use one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk part of the RAID breaks down, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the defective one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also use conventional hard disks that work in RAID for storing backups, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.