Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of saving content on a number of hard disks concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all work as just one single unit where information is stored. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all the drives is exactly the same all of the time, so even in the event that some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may vary based on the exact setup - whether information is written on all drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Hosting

The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all hosting accounts are generated employs quick NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the other drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is another level of security for your info together with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - whenever data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the websites as the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is added, the info which will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done in order to ensure that the data that is being duplicated is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we set up virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure 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 cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the info which will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the required data is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable Internet hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of unforeseen hardware failure.