Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, however what’s common between them is the fact that they all function as one single unit where data is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the information on all drives will be the same all the time, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance could differ according to the particular setup - whether information is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The drives which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but extremely fast NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we use. All of the content that you upload to the shared hosting account will be stored on multiple disk drives and at least one will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it'll be replaced with no 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 other disks. This is done in order to guarantee the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never need to concern yourself with the loss of any information no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you host your sites within a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the hard drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the information that is copied to a brand new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID stops working since the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a hard drive stops working, the system can switch to another one right away without service interruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform together with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums as a way to verify the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Servers
If you take advantage of one of our VPS server solutions, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk from the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the data that will be cloned 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 use regular hard drives that operate in RAID for storing backups, so should you include this service to your VPS package, your content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.