Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on multiple hard drives concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as just a single unit where data is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the info on all of the drives will be identical all of the time, so even in case some drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ according to the exact setup - whether info is written on all of the drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Cloud Web Hosting
All of the content that you upload to your new cloud web hosting account will be held on quick NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to work with the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds one more level of protection for your site content in addition to the real-time checksum authentication that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is saved on several disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever information is recorded on it, an extra bit is added, so if any drive stops working for some reason, the integrity of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is stored on the production drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will never be interrupted and it'll continue functioning efficiently until the faulty drive is changed and the information is synchronized on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for saving any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data copied on this kind of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what information will be copied 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 information on the new drive will be correct. During the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't have an impact on the adequate operation of your sites in any way. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our advanced cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers referred to as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Hosting
The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we create virtual private servers work in RAID to ensure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the data that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the needed info is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any sort of sudden hardware malfunction.