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 perform as just a single unit where information is saved. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives is identical all of the time, so even if one of the drives fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance will also improve because the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may vary based on the particular setup - whether data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Website Hosting
Our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are generated uses super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disks operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it is copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case 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 recorded on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is an additional level of protection for your info together with the revolutionary ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the operation of the websites since the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the data which will be cloned on it will be a mix between the information on the parity disk and data kept on the other drives in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the info which is being duplicated is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your information since the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Hosting
In case you take advantage of one of our virtual private server plans, any content which you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your info. 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 Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the defective one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any chance of corrupting data during the process is averted. We also use regular hard disk drives that work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.