Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard drives concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all perform as just one single unit where data is saved. The main advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the info on all of the drives will be identical all of the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the other drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well as the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary based on the exact setup - whether information is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The drives which we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but quick NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we use. All of the content that you add to the shared hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least one of them shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed without any service disruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - any time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be faulty, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the data which will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the info on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to ensure that the information that is being duplicated is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the separate drives to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also use standard hard drives which 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 have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.