RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that enables a system to take advantage of multiple hard drives as a single logical unit. In other words, all drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This type of a configuration has two key advantages over using just a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive stops working, the data will be accessible through the others, and the second one is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among different drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with what amount of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance could differ.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
All of the content which you upload to your new cloud hosting account will be saved on fast SSD drives that work in RAID-Z. This setup is built to employ the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform and it adds another level of protection for your site content in addition to the real-time checksum validation that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on a number of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever information is written on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive stops working for whatever reason, the integrity of the information can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is stored on the production disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system won't be interrupted and it'll continue working flawlessly until the problematic drive is changed and the info is synced on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is stored on SSD drives that function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is cloned on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk turns out to be problematic, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the operation of the Internet sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the data that will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the data on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the data which is being copied is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is one more warranty for the integrity of your data because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a special checksum of all of the copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts that we provide are created on physical servers which use SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the information copied on it and if a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it much simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the right data is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will still be online because all the info will still load from at least 1 more hard drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the information will be kept on standard hard disks that also operate in RAID as we want to make sure that any kind of website content you add will be risk-free all of the time. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers allows us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.