Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on multiple hard drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all work as a single unit where data is stored. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the data on all the drives is the same at all times, so even if a drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be present on the other drives. The general performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may differ depending on the specific setup - whether info is written on all drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.

RAID in Hosting

The disk drives which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we work with. Any content that you add to the hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least 1 will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without service disruptions and the information will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you won't ever need to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The RAID type which we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account will be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is cloned on this special drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a faulty disk is replaced, the data that will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to make sure that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be up and running normally because RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without causing any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will never need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is used 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 info that will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the needed information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unforeseen hardware failure.