Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all function as just a single unit where info is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all drives is identical at all times, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance can vary according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

Our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are generated uses super fast NVMe drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disks operate together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, thus practically nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your information along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that 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 drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the malfunctioning drive will not have an effect on the proper 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 revolutionary cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server plans, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data throughout the process is avoided. We also use regular hard drives that function in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.