Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is that they all work as just a single unit where your information is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives shall be identical all the time, so even in case some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The general performance is also enhanced because the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance could differ depending on the specific setup - whether data is written on all drives real-time or it's written on one drive and after that mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Shared Website Hosting
The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is developed to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where data located on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the bad one, the info that will be cloned on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to confirm the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information which you upload to your shared website hosting account together with the ZFS file system that compares a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives that are used for saving any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive shall be accurate. During the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't have an effect on the proper operation of your websites in any way. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up VPS servers function in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data cloned on it. In case a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information which will be copied on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the needed data is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be a part of 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 web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any type of unforeseen hardware failure.