Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on multiple hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all work as just one single unit where information is kept. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all drives will be the same all of the time, so even if a drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be present on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance can vary according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all of the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Web Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information saved on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the data that will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is done so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every file correctly and to validate the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info that you upload to your web hosting account together with the ZFS file system that analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. During the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the faulty drive will not affect the adequate operation of your websites at all. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses special digital identifiers referred to as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The physical servers where we generate VPS server work with fast NVMe drives that will increase the speed of your Internet sites considerably. The hard disks function in RAID to make sure that you will not lose any info as a result of a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers use many different drives where the data is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the data copied on it, which makes it much easier to recover the site content without any loss if a main drive fails. In case you choose our backup service, your information will be saved on a separate machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and though there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup copy of your website content all of the time. With this type of setup your data will always be safe because it will be available on several drives.