Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all perform as one single unit where information is saved. The key advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the info on all drives is exactly the same at all times, so even if one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the other drives. The general performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may differ based on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Cloud Web Hosting
Our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud web hosting accounts are made employs fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disk drives operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is one more level of protection for your information together with the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup 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 kind of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue working normally and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the normal operation of your sites by any means. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers known as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
All virtual private server accounts that our company offers are generated on physical servers that employ NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the information cloned on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will stay online as all the information will still load from at least 1 more hard disk. In case you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your info will be kept on standard disk drives that also operate in RAID as we would like to make certain that any kind of content you add will be risk-free all the time. Using multiple hard drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.