RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on several hard disks that function together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into different ones through virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same data is kept on all drives and the key advantage of employing such a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types may differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are generated employs fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disks function together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, so absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is another level of security for your data in addition to the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure 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 function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the operation of the websites because 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 combination between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done in order to ensure that the data which is being copied is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your information since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all of the copies of the files on the different drives in order to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The physical servers where we make virtual private server use super fast NVMe drives that will increase the speed of your Internet sites substantially. The hard drives function in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any data due to a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers employ multiple drives where the information is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the info copied on it, which makes it easier to recover the site content without any loss if a main drive stops working. In case you pick our backup service, your information will be saved on an individual machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup copy of your site content at all times. With this setup your information will always be safe as it will be available on a lot of drives.