Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all operate as just a single unit where information is stored. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all the drives shall be the same all of the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may differ based on the particular setup - whether info is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are created uses fast NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disks function together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some 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, therefore nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is an additional level of protection for your data along with the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the operation of the sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the data that will be cloned on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other drives in the RAID. This is done in order to ensure that the info that is being duplicated is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all copies of the files on the various drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server packages, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which operate in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also employ conventional hard disk drives which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.