RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on multiple hard drives that work together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case a single drive is split into independent ones using virtualization software. Either way, the very same data is stored on all drives and the main benefit of employing this kind of a setup is that in the event that a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Using a RAID also improves the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many drives are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can vary.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
Our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform where all cloud website hosting accounts are made employs quick NVMe drives rather than the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, a number of hard drives work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that practically nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of protection for your information in addition to the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The RAID type which we use for the cloud hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is called RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. Put simply, whenever any data is copied on this special drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a problematic disk is replaced, the data that will be cloned on it is a combination of the data on the remaining drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that your data is intact. During this process, your sites will be functioning normally as RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without any service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you won't ever need to worry about the integrity of your files.