RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which permits a system to use a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has 2 huge advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the information will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both handled from all the drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info located on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the info that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information you upload to your shared website hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each file on all disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what info will be copied on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the problematic drive won't impact the proper operation of your websites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is changed and the data which will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the required information 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 disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unforeseen hardware failure.