RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on several hard drives that function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is divided into different ones via virtualization software. In any case, the same information is saved on all drives and the key advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data will still be available on the other ones. Using a RAID also improves the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The revolutionary cloud web hosting platform where all shared website hosting accounts are generated uses quick NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disks operate together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service interruptions. This is another level of security for your info in addition to the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is stored on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the Internet sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the information that will be cloned on it will be a blend between the info on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done so as to ensure that the info that is being duplicated is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your data since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud 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 Servers

All VPS server accounts which our company provides are made on physical servers which employ NVMe drives working in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is included in the info duplicated on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the right information is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your sites will still be online as all the information will still load from at least 1 other hard disk. In case you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the information will be saved on standard disk drives which also work in RAID as we would like to make sure that any type of content you upload will be safe and sound all the time. Using multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.