Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on a number of hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all perform as a single unit where your information is stored. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives will be the same all the time, so even if some drive fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also better since the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ depending on the specific setup - whether information is written on all drives real-time or it's written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

Our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are made uses super fast NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard disks work together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, thus nothing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is another level of security for your information together with the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, all the content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the hard drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info which is duplicated to a new drive if one of the drives in the RAID fails since the website content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even in case a disk drive stops working, the system could switch to a different one quickly without service disruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an extra level of safety for the content which you upload on our cloud web hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums so as to verify the integrity of each file.

RAID in VPS Servers

All VPS server accounts which we provide are created on physical servers which employ NVMe drives working in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one additional bit is added to the information duplicated on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the correct info is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your sites will remain online as all the information will still load from at least 1 other disk drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your information will be stored on standard hard drives which also operate in RAID because we want to make certain that any site content you add will be protected at all times. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.