Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all perform as just a single unit where data is kept. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives is the same all the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary 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 then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Shared Web Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created 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 info stored on the other drives is cloned with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the problematic one, the information which will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of each file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content which you upload to your shared web hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The RAID type that we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is referred to as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is employed as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is duplicated on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a problematic disk is replaced, the information that will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. We do this to make sure that the data is intact. Throughout this process, your Internet sites will be working normally because RAID-Z enables a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply uses one of the other ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to warrant that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever need to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS Servers
In case you use one of our VPS server plans, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity so as 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 within the RAID fails, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the faulty one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also use standard hard drives that work in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.