RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to employ a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the info on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has two key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the information will be accessible through the remaining ones, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. You can find different RAID types depending on how many drives are used, if reading and writing are both handled from all the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.

RAID in Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended 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 saved on the other drives is cloned with an additional 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 after we replace the bad one, the data that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the information copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your web hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be copied on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the faulty drive won't have an effect on the proper operation of your sites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses special digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up virtual private servers function in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. If a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info which will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the correct information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unexpected hardware malfunction.