Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what’s common between them is that they all perform as just one single unit where info is stored. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all the drives is the same all the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the other drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance can vary depending on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
Our advanced cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are generated uses super fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disks function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned 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 information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, therefore not a thing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your data together with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives that are used for saving any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data duplicated on this type of a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working adequately and the problematic drive will not affect the normal operation of your sites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The physical servers where we generate VPS server employ quick NVMe drives which will increase the speed of your Internet sites substantially. The disk drives work in RAID to guarantee that you will not lose any info due to a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers take advantage of many different drives where the info is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all data copied on it, that makes it much easier to restore the website content without any loss in case a main drive breaks down. In case you use our backup service, your information will be saved on an independent machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and even though 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 particular setup your info will always be safe since it will be available on a lot of drives.