Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on a number of hard drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is that they all function as just one single unit where info is saved. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all the drives will be identical at all times, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance is also better since the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance could differ depending on the particular setup - whether info is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The state-of-the-art cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are created employs fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disk drives operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, so not a single thing will be lost and there won't be any service interruptions. This is an additional level of protection for your info along with the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is intact 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 work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites as the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the info that will be cloned on it will be a combination between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done in order to guarantee that the data which is being duplicated is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all of the copies of the files on the separate drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive fails, it is changed and the data that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the right info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any sort of sudden hardware malfunction.