RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to employ multiple hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all of the drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has 2 major advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first one is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second one is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. There are different RAID types depending on what amount of drives are used, if reading and writing are both done from all drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Determined by the particular setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.
RAID in Website Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where info kept on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the data which will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info which you upload to your website hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the hard drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The RAID type which we use for the cloud web hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any kind of data is copied on this specific drive, one more bit is included to it and in the event that a malfunctioning disk is replaced, the information which will be duplicated on it is a combination of the data on the other drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info is intact. Throughout this process, your sites will be functioning normally because RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data will get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't have to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS
All virtual private server accounts that our company offers are made on physical servers that employ NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is intended for parity - one extra bit is added to the data duplicated on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the accurate information is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. At the same time, your sites will still be online because all the data will still load from at least 1 more hard drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be stored on standard disk drives that also operate in RAID as we would like to make certain that any sort of content you add will be safe and sound at all times. Working with multiple hard drives in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.