RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to use many hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a setup has two huge advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the data will be accessed from the others, and the second is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with the number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both performed from all the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Website Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are generated employs fast NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disks function together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus practically nothing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is an additional level of security for your info together with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is cloned on this special drive, one more bit is included to it and if a faulty disk is replaced, the info that will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the remaining drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that your info is intact. Throughout this process, your sites will be working normally because RAID-Z makes it possible for an entire drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server packages, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk from the RAID breaks down, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use standard hard drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so in case you include this service to your VPS plan, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.