Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on a number of hard disk drives concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is that they all work as just a single unit where your information is stored. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all drives is exactly the same all the time, so even in the event that some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is also better since the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may vary according to the particular setup - whether your data is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Cloud Web Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are generated uses super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information 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 will be no service disturbances. This is an additional level of security for your data together with the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for storing any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on this type of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what info will be duplicated on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the problematic drive won't affect the normal operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers identified as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers function in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is changed and the data which will be copied on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the correct info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disk drives functioning 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 sort of sudden hardware failure.