RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which makes it possible for a system to use several hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has 2 key advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the information will be accessible from the others, and the second is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. You can find different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both performed from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Hosting

The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data stored on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks fails, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the data which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the information from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file adequately and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information which you upload to your hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all hard drives in real time.

RAID in VPS Hosting

In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server packages, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID stops working, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ standard hard disks which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.