RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disks which work together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is split into individual ones via virtualization software. In either case, identical data is stored on all the drives and the basic advantage of using this kind of a setup is that in the event that a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also improves the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.

RAID in Cloud Website Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information located on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the malfunctioning one, the data which will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the info duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the content you upload to your cloud website hosting account along with the ZFS file system that compares a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the disk drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives which are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data cloned on such a hard drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be duplicated on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the problematic drive won't have an impact on the proper operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers called checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The physical servers where we make VPS server employ quick NVMe drives which will boost the speed of your sites noticeably. The drives function in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any data as a result of a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers employ many different drives where the info is stored 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 recover the site content without any loss if a main drive breaks down. If you take advantage of our backup service, your information will be stored on a separate machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there is no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup of your website content at all times. With this type of setup your data will always be safe because it will be available on several disk drives.