RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on several hard disk drives which work together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is divided into independent ones through virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same info is saved on all of the drives and the key benefit of using this kind of a setup is that if a drive fails, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types can vary.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where information located on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the malfunctioning one, the data which will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every file correctly and to validate the integrity of the data duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the information that you upload to your cloud hosting account along with the ZFS file system which compares a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives that are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a disk drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be copied on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the malfunctioning drive will not impact the proper operation of your Internet sites in any way. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an impressive addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our advanced cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers referred to as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
If you employ one of our VPS server solutions, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that operate in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity to guarantee 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 within the RAID stops functioning, your websites will continue working and when a new disk replaces the flawed one, the bits of the data that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any chance of corrupting data during the process is avoided. We also employ conventional hard disks which operate in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you add this service to your VPS plan, your content will be saved on multiple drives and you will never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.