RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on a number hard disk drives that function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is divided into separate ones through virtualization software. In any case, the very same info is saved on all of the drives and the main advantage of using such a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors indicate that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data stored on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the info which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the information from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every file properly and to confirm the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content which you upload to your cloud hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is called RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this specific drive, one more bit is added to it and if a malfunctioning disk is changed, the data that will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your sites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without any 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 which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts that we offer are made on physical servers which employ NVMe drives working in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the information cloned on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the correct info is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your sites will stay online as all the information will still load from at least 1 other hard drive. If you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be saved on standard hard disks which also function in RAID as we want to make certain that any type of website content you upload will be safe and sound all of the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.