RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on several hard disks that function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is divided into individual ones through virtualization software. In either case, the very same info is stored on all drives and the key advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors suggest that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information saved on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the info which 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 performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the information you upload to your shared hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the operation of the Internet sites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the information that will be cloned on it will be a blend between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the information that is being copied is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your info since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a special checksum of all of the copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers function in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is changed and the information which will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the correct info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of sudden hardware failure.