RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on multiple hard drives that operate together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is divided into separate ones through virtualization software. In either case, identical data is stored on all the drives and the basic advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also improves the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synced between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors show that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.
RAID in Shared Website Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it uses the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information stored on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the faulty one, the information that will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the information from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file adequately and to verify the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info you upload to your shared website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each file on all disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on such a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive shall be correct. During the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the problematic drive won't have an effect on the proper operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
If you employ one of our VPS server solutions, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity so as to ensure the integrity of the info. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk from the RAID fails, your sites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the faulty one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ conventional hard disks that work in RAID for storing backups, so in case you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be stored on multiple drives and you won't ever have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.