Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard disks simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is that they all function as one single unit where information is stored. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives will be the same all of the time, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be present on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also better as the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance can vary based on the specific setup - whether info is written on all drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Web Hosting
The cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are generated employs quick NVMe drives instead of the traditional HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard drives function together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus not a single thing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your data together with the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The RAID type which we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated server account shall be created is named RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is employed as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is duplicated on this specific hard drive, one more bit is included to it and in case a faulty disk is replaced, the data that will be duplicated on it is a mix of the data on the remaining disk drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to guarantee that your information is intact. During this process, your sites will be working normally since RAID-Z makes it possible for a whole drive to fail without causing any service disruptions and it simply uses one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data can get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't have to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts that our company provides are created on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the info cloned on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the accurate data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your Internet sites will still be online as all the info will still load from at least one other disk drive. In case you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the data will be stored on standard hard disks that also function in RAID since we would like to make certain that any sort of website content you upload will be risk-free all the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.