Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on a number of hard disks concurrently. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is the fact that they all operate as just one single unit where your information is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the data on all drives shall be the same all the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance will also improve since the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and then mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The hard disks which we employ for storage with our revolutionary cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but super fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you upload to your shared hosting account will be kept on multiple hard disks and at least one shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced without service disruptions and the data will be recovered 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 so as to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about the loss of any information no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites because the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a new drive is added, the info which will be duplicated on it will be a combination between the information on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the info that is being duplicated is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the separate drives so as to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
In case you use one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk part of the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ ordinary hard disk drives that work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.