RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to take advantage of a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all of the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has 2 key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive breaks down, the info will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among multiple drives. You can find different RAID types based on how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both performed from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. According to the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may vary.
RAID in Shared Web Hosting
The cutting-edge cloud hosting platform where all shared web hosting accounts are created uses fast NVMe drives as opposed to the traditional HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard disk drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, thus not a thing will be lost and there will be no service interruptions. This is one more level of protection for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on this kind of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be duplicated on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive won't affect the adequate operation of your Internet sites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses unique digital identifiers known as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
All virtual private server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers that use NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is added to the info copied on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the correct data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your Internet sites will remain online since all the information will still load from at least one more disk drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the data will be stored on standard disk drives that also work in RAID as we want to make sure that any kind of content you upload will be protected all of the time. Using multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.