Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard disks at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is the fact that they all work as just a single unit where information is kept. The key advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the information on all of the drives will be the same at all times, so even if one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance could differ based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Hosting
All of the content that you upload to your new hosting account will be saved on quick NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to use the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds an additional level of protection for your site content on top of the real-time checksum authentication that ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on a number of disks and at least one of them is a parity disk - whenever data is written on it, an extra bit is added, so in the event that any drive stops working for whatever reason, the integrity of the information 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 operation of our system will never be interrupted and it will continue working effectively until the problematic drive is replaced and the info is synchronized on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data cloned on this type of a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be duplicated on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive will be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the proper operation of your websites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb 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 known as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
If you employ one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk inside the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the information that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ regular hard disk drives that work in RAID for storing backups, so should you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.