Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, but what is common between them is that they all perform as just a single unit where your information is saved. The key advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives will be identical at all times, so even in case one of the drives fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may vary based on the exact setup - whether data is written on all the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Shared Web Hosting
Our advanced cloud Internet hosting platform where all shared web hosting accounts are created employs super fast NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disks operate together and at least 1 is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, 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 using the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus nothing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is one more level of security for your data in addition to the revolutionary ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives which are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts that we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more hard drives are used 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 replaced with a new one, what data will be copied 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 ensure that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue working normally and the problematic drive won't have an effect on the adequate operation of your sites at all. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers called checksums to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we create VPS servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the required information is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard disks operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable Internet hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of sudden hardware failure.