Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is the fact that they all perform as one single unit where information is kept. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the data on all drives will be identical all of the time, so even in the event that some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes can be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary according to the specific setup - whether data is written on all drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

Our advanced cloud web hosting platform where all shared website hosting accounts are created employs super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disks work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, 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 in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, so not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your info in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.

RAID in VPS Servers

If you employ one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk within the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also use standard hard drives which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.