Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on a number of hard disks concurrently. A RAID can 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 function as one single unit where information is saved. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the information on all drives will be exactly the same all the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may differ based on the specific setup - whether info is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The revolutionary cloud hosting platform where all cloud website hosting accounts are generated employs fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disk drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is another level of protection for your information together with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is named RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any data is cloned on this specific hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a defective disk is changed, the data which will be copied on it is a mix of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data is intact. During this process, your sites will be up and running normally because RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without causing any service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we create VPS servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of info is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the required info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unpredicted hardware malfunction.