Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all perform as just a single unit where info is kept. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the information on all the drives shall be the same at all times, so even in case some drive fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes can be split between a number of drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may vary based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Hosting

Our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are generated uses quick NVMe drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disk drives operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, so not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is another level of protection for your information along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is named RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this particular disk drive, one more bit is added to it and if a defective disk is replaced, the information which will be copied on it is a mix of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that your data is intact. During this process, your Internet sites will be working normally because RAID-Z enables 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 that uses checksums to warrant that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the information which will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the correct info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disk drives operating 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 since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of unforeseen hardware malfunction.