RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to take advantage of several hard drives as one single logical unit. Put simply, all the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This type of a setup has two huge advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first one is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, the info will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. You can find different RAID types based on the number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both executed from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are created uses quick NVMe drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard drives work together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is another level of protection for your data along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe 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 special configuration where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data cloned on this type of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be copied on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the faulty drive won't have an effect on the adequate operation of your websites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent 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 specific digital identifiers named checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we set up VPS servers function in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the information which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the right information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted since the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any type of unexpected hardware failure.