RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on a number hard drives which operate together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into individual ones using virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same information is kept on all the drives and the main benefit of using this kind of a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also improves the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it is 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 and the performance between the various RAID types may vary.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The hard disks which we employ for storage with our outstanding cloud Internet hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but fast NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you add to your cloud hosting account will be held on multiple disk drives and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an extra bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed without service interruptions and the data will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever have to worry about losing any info no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is kept on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - any time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk turns out to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the operation of the Internet sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a new drive is included, the info which will be cloned on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done so as to guarantee that the info that is being cloned is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we create VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the info that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the needed data is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of unpredicted hardware malfunction.