Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard disks at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is the fact that they all function as just a single unit where info is stored. The key advantage of using a RAID is redundancy as the info on all of the drives is the same at all times, so even in case some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be present on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may vary based on the exact setup - whether data is written on all drives 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 Cloud Website Hosting
The hard disks that we employ for storage with our state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we work with. All the content that you add to your cloud website hosting account will be kept on multiple drives and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced with no service disturbances and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to be concerned about losing any info no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you host your websites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the hard drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the drives, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the data that is copied to a brand new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID fails because the website content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even if a disk drive stops working, the system can easily switch to a different one right away without service disruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds one more level of protection for the content which you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform together with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums in order to verify the integrity of every single file.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts which we provide are generated on physical servers that employ NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the data cloned on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged disk drive so that the right data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will remain online as all the info will still load from at least 1 other drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the information will be saved on standard hard disks that also operate in RAID because we want to make sure that any type of content you add will be protected all the time. Using multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.