RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on multiple hard disk drives which function together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one drive is divided into different ones using virtualization software. In any case, the very same information is stored on all the drives and the key advantage of using such a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data will remain available on the other ones. Having a RAID also boosts the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the fault tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types can differ.
RAID in Website Hosting
The advanced cloud hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are made employs quick NVMe drives as opposed to the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, numerous hard disk drives work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is duplicated 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 recorded on the other ones, thus practically nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is an additional level of protection for your data along with the revolutionary 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 Hosting
The NVMe drives which are used for storing any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data copied on such a drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what data will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive will be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the normal operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers identified as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.