RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to use multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. Such a setup has two huge advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, the info will be accessed through the others, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. You can find different RAID types based on the number of drives are used, if reading and writing are both handled from all the drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. According to the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
Our revolutionary cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are made employs super fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disks function together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified using 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 another level of protection for your information in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee 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 storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this type of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the information on the new drive shall be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the adequate operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our advanced cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers named checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
If you use one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity to guarantee the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ ordinary hard drives which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS package, your 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.