RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on a number hard disks that work together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is divided into individual ones through virtualization software. Either way, exactly the same data is saved on all the drives and the basic advantage of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data will remain available on the other ones. Using a RAID also enhances the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID depending on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the information is synced between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors mean that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can vary.
RAID in Website Hosting
Our advanced cloud hosting platform where all website hosting accounts are generated uses quick NVMe drives as an alternative to the standard HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disks function together and at least one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the remaining drives, it is duplicated on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even if some drive fails or falls out of the RAID for some reason, the info can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that practically nothing will be lost and there will not be any service interruptions. This is an additional level of protection for your data in addition to the cutting-edge ZFS file system that uses checksums to guarantee that all the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data duplicated on this kind of a drive. If a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what data will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other drives 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 normally and the faulty drive will not have an impact on the adequate operation of your Internet sites by any means. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an excellent addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.