RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which enables a system to take advantage of a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This kind of a configuration has two key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive stops working, the information will be accessible from the remaining ones, and the second is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are different RAID types based on what number of drives are used, if reading and writing are both done from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance vary.
RAID in Shared Website Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud hosting platform employs for storage work 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 information kept on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the problematic one, the info that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives as well as the info from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the data copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the info which you upload to your shared website hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - any time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be faulty, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the websites as the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is added, the information that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other drives in the RAID. That is done to guarantee that the information which is being copied is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional guarantee for the integrity of your data because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of the files on the different drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
In case you take advantage of one of our VPS server plans, any content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives that function in RAID. At least 1 drive is intended for parity to ensure the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where info is copied with one bit added to it. In the event that a disk from the RAID stops functioning, your sites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the info that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any possibility of corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also use standard hard disks which operate in RAID for storing backups, so if you add this service to your VPS plan, your website content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.