RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on multiple hard disks which work together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case a single drive is divided into individual ones via virtualization software. In either case, the very same data is kept on all drives and the main advantage of using such a setup is that in the event that a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also improves the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors show that the fault tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types can differ.
RAID in Cloud Web Hosting
The drives which we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud web hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but super fast solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system that we employ. All of the content that you add to the cloud web hosting account will be saved on multiple hard disks and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it'll be changed with no service disruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with losing any information no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is stored on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a configuration is used for parity - every time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk happens to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the operation of the Internet sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done so as to guarantee that the info that is being cloned is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it can be included in the RAID as a production one. This is one more guarantee for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all copies of your files on the separate drives to be able to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
If you take advantage of one of our virtual private server solutions, any content you upload will be stored on SSD drives that work in RAID. At least a single drive is used for parity to guarantee the integrity of the data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk from the RAID stops working, your Internet sites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the flawed one, the bits of the info that will be cloned on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any chance of corrupting data throughout the process is prevented. We also employ ordinary hard disks which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so if you include this service to your VPS plan, your content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.