Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on a number of hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as a single unit where info is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives will be identical all of the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance could differ depending on the particular setup - whether information is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info kept on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the info which will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each file correctly and to validate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info which you upload to your cloud web hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your sites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, all of the content you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info that is cloned to a new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning because the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even in case a drive fails, the system can easily switch to a different one instantly without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform together with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums so as to validate the integrity of every single file.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we generate VPS servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the info which will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the required info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted as the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable web hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any unpredicted hardware malfunction.