RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on several hard disks which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is split into independent ones through virtualization software. Either way, the very same info is saved on all the drives and the basic benefit of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Using a RAID also boosts the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors indicate that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can vary.
RAID in Hosting
The hard disks which we use for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but extremely fast NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we use. All the content that you upload to your hosting account will be saved on multiple drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be changed without any service disturbances and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you host your Internet sites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all the content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the hard disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data which is cloned to a new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning since the content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even if a drive stops working, the system can easily switch to a different one right away without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform along with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums so as to verify the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts that we provide are generated on physical servers that use NVMe drives working in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is added to the info cloned on it and in case a main disk fails, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the correct information is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will still be online since all the information will still load from at least 1 other drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the info will be saved on standard disk drives that also function in RAID as we would like to make certain that any site content you add will be safe and sound all the time. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.