Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, still what’s common between them is that they all perform as a single unit where info is stored. The main advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives will be identical at all times, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes could be split between different drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There're different sorts of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance can vary depending on the particular setup - whether your data is written on all of the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and so on.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The disk drives that we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we employ. All the content that you upload to your cloud website hosting account will be saved on multiple hard drives and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced with no service disturbances and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum verification that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you will never need to concern yourself with the loss of any information no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data cloned on this type of a disk drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what info will be duplicated on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the info on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the problematic drive will not have an effect on the proper operation of your sites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a great addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses unique digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.