RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on multiple hard disks which work together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is divided into different ones using virtualization software. In either case, the very same information is stored on all drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also improves the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all 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 indicate that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types could differ.

RAID in Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind 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 data saved on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the bad one, the data that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives together with the information from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info you upload to your hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in VPS Servers

In case you employ one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk from the RAID breaks down, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the malfunctioning one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use regular hard drives that operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you add this service to your VPS plan, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.