Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what’s common between them is the fact that they all perform as a single unit where information is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the data on all of the drives shall be the same all the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes could be split between multiple drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance can vary according to the exact setup - whether data is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The disk drives that we use for storage with our ground-breaking cloud Internet hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we employ. All the content that you upload to the cloud website hosting account will be held on multiple drives and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced without any service interruptions and the information will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done in order to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about the loss of any data no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a hard drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what information will be cloned on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the faulty drive will not have an impact on the normal operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
In case you employ one of our VPS server plans, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk within the RAID stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any potential for corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use regular hard drives that function in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.