RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on multiple hard disk drives that function together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is divided into individual ones using virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same data is saved on all drives and the main benefit of employing this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data will remain available on the other ones. Having a RAID also boosts the performance because 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 performed 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's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may vary.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
Our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are generated employs fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disk drives work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus not a single thing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is an additional level of protection for your info in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you host your Internet sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all of the content you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is copied to a new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning because the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a drive fails, the system can easily switch to a different one instantly without service disruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an additional level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums to authenticate the integrity of every single file.
RAID in VPS
All virtual private server accounts which we offer are made on physical servers that employ NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one additional bit is included in the information duplicated on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the accurate info is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will still be online because all the information will still load from at least one more drive. In case you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the information will be stored on standard hard disks that also operate in RAID since we want to make sure that any website content you upload will be protected at all times. Working with multiple hard drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.