Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on a number of hard disks concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all work as a single unit where information is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives is identical all the time, so even if one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the other drives. The overall performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes will be split between multiple drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance could differ depending on the particular setup - whether info is written on all drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info located on the other drives is copied with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the bad one, the data that will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of each file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the info that you upload to your web hosting account together with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data cloned on this kind of a hard drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what information will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the problematic drive won't affect the normal operation of your sites by any means. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers identified as checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we create VPS servers function in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the info which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the required data is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable web hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of unforeseen hardware failure.