Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on a number of hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is the fact that they all work as one single unit where data is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all drives will be the same all the time, so even if a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well because the reading and writing processes could be split between different drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance could differ according to the exact setup - whether info is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The advanced cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are made employs quick NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disks work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, 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 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 stored on the other ones, which means that not a single thing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is another level of security for your data together with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is named RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is copied on this specific hard drive, one more bit is added to it and if a faulty disk is replaced, the info which will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that your information is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally as RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The physical servers where we create VPS server use extremely fast NVMe drives that will boost the speed of your websites noticeably. The disk drives work in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any data due to a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers employ multiple drives where the information is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the data copied on it, that makes it easier to restore the site content without any loss in the event a main drive breaks down. In case you use our backup service, your data will be kept on an independent machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and though there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup copy of your website content all of the time. With this particular setup your information will always be safe as it will be available on many disk drives.