Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on multiple hard drives concurrently. 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 the fact that they all work as just one single unit where information is stored. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the information on all the drives will be exactly the same all of the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also better because the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance can vary based on the particular setup - whether information is written on all 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, etc.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created uses quick NVMe drives instead of the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disks function together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, thus absolutely nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your info together with the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The RAID type that we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is known as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any kind of data is duplicated on this particular drive, one more bit is included to it and if a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the info which will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the information is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be up and running normally because RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not need to worry about the integrity of your files.

RAID in VPS Web Hosting

The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we create virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content 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 stops working, it is replaced and the information that 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 required info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable web hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unpredicted hardware malfunction.