Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, however what’s common between them is that they all function as one single unit where your information is saved. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives will be identical all the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may differ based on the exact setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The drives which we use for storage with our top-notch cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we employ. Any content that you upload to the cloud hosting account will be saved on multiple hard drives and at least one shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be changed with no service disruptions and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional 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 copied on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive shall be correct. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the adequate operation of your sites by any means. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info that will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the needed info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that 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 unpredicted hardware malfunction.