RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to use a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has 2 key advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the info will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among a number of drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both done from all of the drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Depending on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.
RAID in Hosting
The disk drives that we use for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but extremely fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system which we work with. All of the content that you upload to your hosting account will be saved on multiple disk drives and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced without any service interruptions and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about losing any data no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
In case you host your Internet sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all the content you upload will be held on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least 1 of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info which is cloned to a brand new drive if one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning as the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a drive fails, the system could switch to another one instantly without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds one more level of security for the content you upload on our cloud web hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Hosting
The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we generate virtual private servers function in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive stops working, it is changed and the information which will be copied on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to make sure that the required information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.