RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to employ many hard drives as a single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has 2 major advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are used, if reading and writing are both performed from all of the drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The hard drives which we employ for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we work with. All the content that you add to your shared website hosting account will be stored on multiple hard disks and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be changed with no service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never need to concern yourself with the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you host your Internet sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all the content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least 1 of the drives is used for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info which is cloned to a brand new drive in case one of the drives in the RAID fails since the website content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a disk drive stops working, the system can easily switch to a different one promptly without service interruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds one more level of safety for the content which you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform along with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server solutions, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk inside the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any probability of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also use regular hard disks that function in RAID for storing backups, so in case you include 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 failures.