Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is the fact that they all work as just a single unit where your information is stored. The key advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives shall be the same at all times, so even in the event that a drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well 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 efficiency and fault tolerance may differ depending on the specific setup - whether data is written on all drives in real time or it is written on one drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Web Hosting
The advanced cloud hosting platform where all web hosting accounts are created employs fast NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disks operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it's duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that absolutely nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is an additional level of security for your information together with the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you host your Internet sites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, any content that you upload will be saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least 1 of the disks is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the disks, an additional bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info that is copied to a brand new drive in the event that one of the drives in the RAID stops functioning because the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a hard drive stops working, the system can switch to another one right away without service interruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an extra level of security for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums in order to verify the integrity of each file.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
The physical servers where we make virtual private server employ fast NVMe drives that will boost the speed of your sites noticeably. The hard disks operate in RAID to ensure that you won't lose any info because of a power loss or a hardware malfunction. The production servers use multiple drives where the data is stored and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all the data copied on it, which makes it much easier to recover the website content without loss if a main drive breaks down. In case you take advantage of our backup service, your information will be saved on an individual machine which uses standard hard-disk drives and despite the fact that there is no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to make sure that we will have a backup of your website content all of the time. With this setup your data will always be safe as it will be available on several drives.