Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard disks at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all work as one single unit where information is saved. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all of the drives will be the same all of the time, so even if a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance can vary based on the specific setup - whether info is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Web Hosting

The hard disks 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 use. Any content that you add to the shared web hosting account will be saved on multiple hard disks and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be replaced without any service interruptions and the information will be rebuilt 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 so as to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info which will be copied on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other drives in the RAID. This is done in order to guarantee that the information that is being duplicated is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your info because the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a special checksum of all copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The physical servers where we make virtual private server employ quick NVMe drives that will increase the speed of your sites significantly. The hard drives operate in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any info as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers take advantage of a variety of drives where the info is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the info copied on it, that makes it easier to recover the website content without loss in case a main drive fails. If you choose our backup service, the information will be saved on an independent machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to make sure that we will have a backup copy of your content all the time. With this type of configuration your info will always be safe as it will be available on multiple disk drives.