RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on several hard drives that function together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is divided into separate ones using virtualization software. In any case, the very same data is kept on all the drives and the main benefit of employing this kind of a setup is that in the event that a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also improves the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synced between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors suggest that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.
RAID in Hosting
All the content that you upload to your new hosting account will be held on fast NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to employ the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform and it adds one more level of security for your site content in addition to the real-time checksum validation which ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the info is saved on a couple of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever info is written on it, an extra bit is added, so in case any drive fails for some reason, the integrity of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is saved on the production disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will not be interrupted and it will continue functioning flawlessly until the malfunctioning drive is changed and the data is synced on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for keeping any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be cloned on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue working adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not have an effect on the adequate operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our advanced cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers named checksums to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives which we use on the physical machines where we create VPS servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least a single drive is used for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the data which will be cloned on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the required data is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in case you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you will use an even more reliable Internet hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any unexpected hardware malfunction.