RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives that function together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is divided into separate ones via virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same information is saved on all the drives and the key benefit of employing this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also boosts the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors indicate that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can vary.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The advanced cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are generated uses quick NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the other drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case some 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 stored on the other ones, thus nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your information in addition to the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the operation of the sites as the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the info which will be copied on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the info that is being cloned is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your data because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives to be able to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS

All virtual private server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives working in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is included in the data cloned on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your Internet sites will stay online as all the information will still load from at least one other hard drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be kept on standard hard drives which also function in RAID because we would like to make sure that any sort of website content you upload will be safe and sound all of the time. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all of the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.