Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on multiple hard disks concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware depending on the drives 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 info is saved. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the data on all drives is exactly the same all the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes will be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance may vary according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Web Hosting
All the content which you upload to your new web hosting account will be stored on fast SSD drives that operate in RAID-Z. This setup is built to employ the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform and it adds another level of security for your site content on top of the real-time checksum verification which ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the data is stored on a number of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is written on it, an additional bit is added, so if any drive fails for whatever reason, the integrity of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is saved on the production hard disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system will never be interrupted and it will continue operating efficiently until the problematic drive is changed and the data is synced on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The SSD drives which are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on such a disk drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what info will be cloned 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 make sure that the information on the new drive will be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the problematic drive won't have an effect on the proper operation of your websites in any respect. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is an amazing 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 unique digital identifiers known as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
In case you employ one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives which function in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as 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 case a disk inside the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the data that will be duplicated on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any probability of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also use conventional hard disk drives that work in RAID for storing backups, so in case you add this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.