RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on a number hard disks which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is split into different ones via virtualization software. In any case, the same information is kept on all drives and the key benefit of employing this kind of a setup is that if a drive stops working, the data will remain available on the other ones. Using a RAID also boosts the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types may vary.
RAID in Website Hosting
Our advanced cloud hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are made uses fast NVMe drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, multiple hard disk drives operate together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the other drives, it is copied 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 info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, thus nothing will be lost and there will be no service disorders. This is another level of protection for your data in addition to the advanced ZFS file system which uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The RAID type which we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account shall be created is named RAID-Z. What's different about it is that at least 1 of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is duplicated on this specific hard drive, one more bit is added to it and if a problematic disk is replaced, the info that will be copied on it is a mix of the data on the other hard drives in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to guarantee that your data is intact. During this process, your sites will be functioning normally since RAID-Z allows for an entire drive to fail without causing any service interruptions and it simply works by using one of the remaining ones as the main production drive. Using RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system that uses checksums to warrant that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you'll never need to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS Hosting
The physical servers where we generate virtual private server employ super fast NVMe drives which will raise the speed of your Internet sites substantially. The disk drives work in RAID to guarantee that you won't lose any info because of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers work with a variety of drives where the information is saved and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all information copied on it, that makes it easier to restore the content without any loss if a main drive fails. If you take advantage of our backup service, the info will be stored on an individual machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and although there isn't a parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup of your website content at all times. With this type of configuration your info will always be safe as it will be available on many disk drives.