RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on several hard drives which function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one drive is divided into different ones via virtualization software. In either case, exactly the same information is stored on all the drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that if a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Employing a RAID also boosts the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a number of drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types may differ.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the data that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the rest of the drives along with the information from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file adequately and to confirm the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is another level of security for the content you upload to your cloud website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all of the disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
In case you host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account from our company, any content that you upload will be held on NVMe drives that work in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the drives is employed for parity - when data is synchronized between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The idea behind this is to ensure the integrity of the info that is duplicated to a new drive if one of the hard drives in the RAID fails because the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. An additional advantage of RAID-Z is that even in the event that a drive fails, the system could switch to a different one instantly without service disruptions of any sort. RAID-Z adds an additional level of safety for the content that you upload on our cloud hosting platform in addition to the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to authenticate the integrity of each and every file.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts that our company offers are created on physical servers that take advantage of NVMe drives operating in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one extra bit is included in the information duplicated on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it simpler to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed drive so that the right data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your Internet sites will remain online because all the information will still load from at least 1 more hard disk. If you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of your data will be stored on standard disk drives which also function in RAID as we would like to make sure that any sort of website content you add will be risk-free all the time. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.