RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard drives that work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is split into individual ones via virtualization software. In any case, identical information is saved on all the drives and the basic advantage of using such a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also enhances the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info 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. All of these factors mean that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The hard disks which we use for storage with our top-notch cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but quick NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we employ. All the content that you upload to your cloud web hosting account will be stored on multiple disk drives and at least one of them will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be changed with no service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never have to concern yourself with the loss of any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the websites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a combination between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done to ensure that the information which is being cloned is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your info since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all the copies of your files on the various drives to be able to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which our company provides are generated on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is added to the info cloned on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the correct information is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your sites will stay online since all the info will still load from at least one more drive. In case you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be saved on standard hard disks which also work in RAID because we would like to make sure that any content you add will be safe and sound at all times. Working with multiple hard drives in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.