Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what is common between them is the fact that they all operate as just one single unit where data is saved. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all the drives shall be identical at all times, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the other drives. The overall performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes could be split between multiple drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance can vary based on the exact setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Website Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information kept on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the information that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file properly and to confirm the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your website hosting account along with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, all of the content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the information which is duplicated to a new drive in case one of the drives in the RAID fails as the 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 the fact that even in the event that a hard drive stops functioning, the system could switch to another one quickly without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of security for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we create VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data that will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the needed information is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sudden hardware malfunction.