RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which makes it possible for a system to use several hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. Such a setup has 2 major advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the information will be accessed through the others, and the second one is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. You can find different RAID types based on what amount of drives are used, if reading and writing are both done from all of the drives at the same time, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Determined by the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where data saved on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the data which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file adequately and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information that you upload to your cloud hosting account along with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the hard drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives which are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data cloned on such a disk drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what info will be cloned 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. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the problematic drive will not impact the adequate operation of your Internet sites by any means. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers referred to as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we create virtual private servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is changed and the data which will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the required data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of sudden hardware malfunction.