Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all work as one single unit where your information is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the information on all of the drives is identical at all times, so even in the event that some drive fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may differ depending on the specific setup - whether data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data stored on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the bad one, the information that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file adequately and to verify the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the sites since the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a new drive is added, the info which will be cloned on it will be a mix between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done in order to guarantee 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 extra guarantee for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all of the copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you employ one of our virtual private server packages, any content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk in the RAID fails, your Internet 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. This way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ standard hard drives which operate in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be saved on multiple drives and you won't ever need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.