RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on a number hard disks which operate together as one logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is divided into separate ones using virtualization software. In either case, identical info is saved on all drives and the basic benefit of using this type of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also improves the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All of these factors imply that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types may differ.
RAID in Web Hosting
All content which you upload to your new web hosting account will be held on fast NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. This setup is built to work with the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds one more level of security for your site content in addition to the real-time checksum validation which ZFS uses to guarantee the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on a number of disks and at least one is a parity disk - whenever info is recorded on it, an additional bit is added, so if any drive stops working for whatever reason, the integrity of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits in accordance with what is stored on the production hard drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will not be interrupted and it will continue working effectively until the faulty drive is changed and the info is synced on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on NVMe drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - every time data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites because the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the information that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the information on the parity disk and data saved on the other drives in the RAID. That is done so as to ensure that the information which is being copied is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all of the copies of the files on the separate drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Hosting
In case you employ one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is employed for parity so as to guarantee the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, your sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the information that will be cloned on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any possibility of corrupting data throughout the process is averted. We also employ regular hard disks which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so should you include this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never have to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.