Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on several hard drives concurrently. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, but what’s common between them is the fact that they all operate as a single unit where info is stored. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the information on all of the drives shall be identical all of the time, so even in the event that one of the drives fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also better since the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may vary depending on the specific setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Hosting
The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all hosting accounts are generated employs quick NVMe drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard drives operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that not a single thing will be lost and there will not be any service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your info along with the cutting-edge ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives that are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide operate 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 extra bit to any data cloned on such a drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive shall be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't affect the proper operation of your websites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we create VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data copied on it. If a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the data that will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to ensure that the correct info is copied and that not a single file is corrupted as the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sort of sudden hardware failure.