Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on multiple hard disks concurrently. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as just one single unit where data is saved. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the data on all drives will be the same all the time, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes could be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may vary depending on the particular setup - whether info is written on all of the drives real-time or it's written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created uses super fast NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disk drives operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that practically nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is another level of security for your information along with the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your sites inside a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all the content you upload will be held on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the hard drives is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is cloned to a new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID stops functioning as the site content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a drive stops functioning, the system can switch to another one promptly without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds one more level of protection for the content that you upload on our cloud hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums in order to verify the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts which we provide are created on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the info copied on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the correct information is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your websites will remain online since all the data will still load from at least one more drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of your info will be saved on standard hard drives which also function in RAID because we would like to make certain that any kind of website content you add will be protected all of the time. Using multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.