Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard disk drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all work as just one single unit where info is saved. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the info on all of the drives shall be exactly the same at all times, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also better since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance could differ depending on the exact setup - whether info is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
Our revolutionary cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are generated employs quick NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard drives work together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the other drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, therefore practically nothing will be lost and there will be no service disturbances. This is one more level of protection for your information together with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for saving any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data duplicated on such a disk drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what info will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the problematic drive will not have an effect on the normal operation of your websites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS
The physical servers where we make virtual private server work with quick NVMe drives which will boost the speed of your sites noticeably. The hard disks function in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any info due to a power loss or a hardware failure. The production servers employ many different drives where the information is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the information copied on it, which makes it easier to recover the site content without loss in case a main drive fails. In case you take advantage of our backup service, the information will be saved on an individual machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and even though there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to ensure that we will have a backup copy of your site content all the time. With this type of configuration your information will always be safe because it will be available on multiple drives.