Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on a number of hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all perform as just a single unit where information is kept. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives shall be exactly the same all the time, so even in case some drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be available on the other drives. The overall performance is also better since the reading and writing processes can be split between multiple drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance could differ based on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all of the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
Any content that you upload to your new cloud website hosting account will be placed on quick NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to employ the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds one more level of security for your content on top of the real-time checksum authentication that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the info is saved on a number of disks and at least one is a parity disk - whenever information is written on it, an extra bit is added, so in the event that any drive stops functioning for whatever reason, the integrity of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is kept 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 flawlessly until the problematic drive is changed and the information is synced on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the operation of the sites as the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the data that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the information on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to ensure that the data that is being copied is correct, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all copies of the files on the different drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS
If you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content which you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the data that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also use ordinary hard disks which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS package, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.