RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to use many hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a configuration has 2 huge advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive breaks down, the information will be accessible from the others, and the second is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among multiple drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are employed, whether reading and writing are both executed from all drives simultaneously, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. According to the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.

RAID in Web Hosting

The revolutionary cloud hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are generated employs super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disk drives operate together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus practically nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is one more level of protection for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for storing any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data duplicated on such a drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be copied on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the problematic drive will not have an effect on the adequate operation of your websites in any respect. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers referred to as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate VPS servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive fails, it is replaced and the data that will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the needed info is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any sudden hardware failure.