Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is the fact that they all work as just a single unit where information is saved. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the information on all the drives is exactly the same at all times, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well because the reading and writing processes will be split between a number of drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ depending on the particular setup - whether info is written on all drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The drives which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but quick NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we employ. All the content that you add to your cloud website hosting account will be stored on multiple disk drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be replaced without service interruptions 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 remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum validation which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about the loss of any info no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this type of a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what data will be copied on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive will be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the normal operation of your sites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers identified as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS
The physical servers where we make virtual private server work with high-speed NVMe drives that will raise the speed of your websites significantly. The drives function in RAID to guarantee that you won't lose any information due to a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers work with multiple drives where the info is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the information copied on it, that makes it easier to restore the site content without any loss in case a main drive stops working. If you choose our backup service, the information will be stored on an independent machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and even though there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to ensure that we will have a backup of your content all the time. With this configuration your information will always be safe since it will be available on many disk drives.