RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on a number hard disks which work together as a single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into individual ones via virtualization software. In any case, the very same data is saved on all the drives and the key advantage of using such a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also boosts the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data 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 show that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The revolutionary cloud hosting platform where all cloud hosting accounts are made uses quick SSD drives instead of the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disks work together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the remaining drives, it's copied on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, so not a single thing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is one more level of security for your data together with the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, any content that you upload will be held on SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least one of the disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the disks, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info which is duplicated to a brand new drive if one of the disks in the RAID breaks down as the site content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a hard drive stops functioning, the system can switch to another one immediately without service interruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an additional level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud web hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums so as to validate the integrity of each file.
RAID in VPS Servers
The SSD drives which we use on the machines where we set up VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive fails, it is replaced and the info which will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the required information is copied and that no file is corrupted as the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks working in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS plan, you'll use an even more reliable web hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unpredicted hardware failure.