RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on several hard drives that function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is divided into separate ones via virtualization software. Either way, the very same information is kept on all the drives and the key advantage of employing such a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The drives which we employ for storage with our top-notch cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we employ. All the content that you upload to the cloud hosting account will be saved on multiple hard disks and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without service interruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this particular disk drive, one more bit is added to it and if a faulty disk is replaced, the information that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to ensure that the data is intact. Throughout this process, your sites will be working normally as RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you use one of our VPS server packages, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least a single drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID breaks down, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any probability of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also use standard hard disks that operate in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.