Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard disk drives concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is that they all function as a single unit where info is saved. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives shall be identical all of the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance can vary according to the exact setup - whether your data is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are made uses super fast NVMe drives instead of the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disk drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other 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 some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, thus absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is one more level of protection for your data in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk happens to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the websites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the data which will be copied on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done to guarantee that the info which is being duplicated is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all the copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up VPS servers function in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least one drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the information which will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the needed info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted as the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any unforeseen hardware failure.