Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is that they all work as just a single unit where info is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives will be the same at all times, so even in case some drive fails for whatever reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may vary depending on the specific setup - whether info is written on all the drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Website Hosting
The advanced cloud web hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are generated employs super fast NVMe drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they function in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard drives operate together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore not a thing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is one more level of security for your data along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you host your sites within a semi-dedicated server account from our company, all of the content that you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this form of RAID, at least 1 of the drives is employed for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The purpose behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the info that is duplicated to a brand new drive in case one of the disks in the RAID stops functioning since the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the data on the standard drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a drive fails, the system can easily switch to another one promptly without service disruptions of any type. RAID-Z adds an additional level of security for the content 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
The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we generate 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 data is added to any data cloned on it. If a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the correct information is copied and that no file is corrupted because the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable web hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any unexpected hardware failure.