RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that permits a system to use a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. Put simply, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is identical. Such a configuration has 2 major advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the data will be accessed from the others, and the second is improved performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among several drives. There are different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both done from all the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may differ.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage operate in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data kept on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and once we replace the problematic one, the data that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives along with the data from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file adequately and to validate the integrity of the information cloned on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your shared hosting account together with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
In case you host your Internet sites inside a semi-dedicated hosting account from our firm, any content which you upload will be held on NVMe drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the drives is used for parity - when data is synchronized between the drives, an additional bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the information that is duplicated to a new drive in the event that one of the disks in the RAID fails as the site content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard hard drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a disk drive fails, the system can easily switch to another one promptly without service interruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds an extra level of protection for the content you upload on our cloud Internet hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums as a way to validate the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
All virtual private server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers that use NVMe drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the data cloned on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed disk drive so that the correct information is restored on the new drive added to the RAID. Meanwhile, your Internet sites will still be online because all the information will still load from at least one other disk drive. If you add routine backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the data will be stored on standard hard drives that also operate in RAID as we want to make certain that any type of content you upload will be risk-free all of the time. Employing multiple hard disks in RAID for all of the main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.