Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is the fact that they all work as one single unit where information is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the information on all of the drives is the same at all times, so even if a drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the other drives. The general performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance could differ according to the particular setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The hard drives that we use for storage with our ground-breaking cloud hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but fast NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we work with. All of the content that you upload to the shared hosting account will be held on multiple disk drives and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be changed without service interruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never need to be concerned about the loss of any data no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a setup is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the work of the Internet sites as the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a 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 saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done to guarantee that the information which is being copied is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your information since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the separate drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Hosting
If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server solutions, any content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk within the RAID breaks down, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. By doing this, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also use standard hard disk drives which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be stored on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.