Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on multiple hard disks simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all perform as one single unit where information is saved. The biggest advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the data on all drives is identical at all times, so even in the event that some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also better since the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ according to the specific setup - whether information is written on all drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your Internet sites will continue working from the other ones and once we replace the malfunctioning one, the data which will be copied on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the other drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information which you upload to your shared hosting account together with the ZFS file system that compares a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
In case you host your websites in a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, all of the content that you upload will be kept on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. With this type of RAID, at least one of the drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is added to it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data that is copied to a brand new drive if one of the hard drives in the RAID breaks down because the site content being copied on the new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even if a disk drive stops functioning, the system could switch to another one promptly without service interruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an extra level of security for the content you upload on our cloud web hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Hosting
All virtual private server accounts that we offer are made on physical servers which take advantage of NVMe drives working in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the data copied on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the correct info is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. In the mean time, your sites will remain online as all the information will still load from at least 1 more drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your information will be saved on standard disk drives that also operate in RAID because we would like to make sure that any kind of site content you upload will be risk-free at all times. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.