RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for storing data on several hard disks which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is split into separate ones using virtualization software. In either case, identical data is kept on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing such a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data will still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also improves the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may vary.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The disk drives which we use for storage with our ground-breaking cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system that we work with. Any content that you add to your shared website hosting account will be saved on multiple drives and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be replaced without any service interruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you will never have to be concerned about losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives that are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data duplicated on this type of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive will not have an impact on the adequate operation of your Internet sites at all. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers called checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The physical servers where we create VPS server use high-speed NVMe drives which will boost the speed of your sites significantly. The hard disks function in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any information as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers use a variety of drives where the data is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all information copied on it, which makes it easier to restore the content without any loss in the event a main drive stops working. In case you pick our backup service, your data will be kept on a separate machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and although there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to make sure that we will have a backup copy of your site content all of the time. With this type of configuration your data will always be safe because it will be available on many drives.