Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on several hard drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what is common between them is the fact that they all function as just one single unit where your information is saved. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all of the drives is the same all of the time, so even in case some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be present on the rest of the drives. The general performance will also improve as the reading and writing processes can be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different kinds of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance can vary depending on the exact setup - whether data is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The state-of-the-art cloud web hosting platform where all shared hosting accounts are made uses quick SSD drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, numerous hard disks work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Put simply, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, thus not a single thing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is an additional level of security for your info along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee 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 within a semi-dedicated server account from our firm, any content that you upload will be held on SSD drives which work in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the hard disks is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data which is duplicated to a new drive if one of the disks in the RAID breaks down as the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the info on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a drive fails, the system can switch to a different one immediately without service disturbances of any type. RAID-Z adds one more level of security for the content which you upload on our cloud hosting platform together with the ZFS file system which uses unique checksums as a way to verify the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts that our company offers are made on physical servers that employ SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is included in the data cloned on it and if a main disk fails, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the accurate data is recovered on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your websites will remain online since all the data will still load from at least 1 more drive. In case you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of your information will be stored on standard hard drives that also operate in RAID because we want to make certain that any sort of website content you upload will be risk-free all the time. Working with multiple hard drives in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable web hosting service.