Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard drives at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all function as just one single unit where your information is saved. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the data on all the drives is the same at all times, so even in the event that some 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 could be split between multiple drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance may vary based on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all drives in real time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are made employs super fast NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disks work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, so absolutely nothing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is another level of protection for your info in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The RAID type that we employ for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is known as RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. Simply put, whenever any data is duplicated on this special disk drive, one more bit is added to it and in case a malfunctioning disk is changed, the data which will be cloned on it is a mix of the data on the remaining hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that your information is intact. During this process, your websites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z allows for a whole drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not need to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS Hosting
The physical servers where we create virtual private server use fast NVMe drives which will boost the speed of your Internet sites noticeably. The hard disks operate in RAID to make sure that you won't lose any information as a result of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers take advantage of multiple drives where the data is kept and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the info copied on it, that makes it much easier to restore the content without any loss in the event a main drive fails. In case you pick our backup service, the data will be saved on an individual machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to ensure that we will have a backup of your site content all the time. With this setup your data will always be safe since it will be available on multiple disk drives.