RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on several hard drives that function together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is split into separate ones through virtualization software. Either way, the same info is kept on all of the drives and the key advantage of using this type of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors indicate that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types may differ.
RAID in Shared Hosting
Our advanced cloud web hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are generated uses fast NVMe drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, multiple hard disk drives work together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case 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 recorded on the other ones, which means that not a single thing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is one more level of security for your information together with the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - each time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the sites because the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the information which will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the information on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done to ensure that the data that is being duplicated is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all of the copies of your files on the various drives to be able to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
In case you take advantage of one of our VPS server packages, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the information. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID fails, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be duplicated on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also employ standard hard disks which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.