Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on a number of hard drives concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all work as a single unit where data is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives is exactly the same at all times, so even if one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance can vary according to the specific setup - whether info 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 Web Hosting
The disk drives that we use for storage with our outstanding cloud Internet hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but extremely fast NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we employ. All the content that you add to the cloud web hosting account will be kept on multiple hard disks and at least 1 shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be changed without any service disruptions and the data will be rebuilt 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 info and together with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never need to concern yourself with losing any data no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for storing any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data cloned on this kind of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be cloned on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the problematic drive won't affect the normal operation of your websites at all. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers called checksums so as to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we generate VPS servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. If a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info which will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the required info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted as the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unexpected hardware malfunction.