Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of keeping content on a number of hard drives concurrently. A RAID might be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all operate as just one single unit where your information is stored. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the information on all drives shall be exactly the same all of the time, so even if a drive fails for some reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The general performance is enhanced as well because the reading and writing processes can be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance may differ based on the exact setup - whether your data is written on all of the drives in real time or it is written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.
RAID in Hosting
The revolutionary cloud web hosting platform where all hosting accounts are created uses quick SSD drives as an alternative to the classic HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this setup, several hard disk drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. Basically, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is performed for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data saved on the other ones, so practically nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disturbances. This is another level of protection for your info in addition to the advanced ZFS file system that uses checksums to make sure that all data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on SSD drives that operate in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an extra bit is added. In case a disk happens to be flawed, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the operation of the Internet sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is added, the info that will be duplicated on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done so as to guarantee that the data that is being copied is accurate, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your info since the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform analyzes a special checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives so as to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
In case you use one of our virtual private server solutions, any content that you upload will be kept on SSD drives that work in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where data is copied with one bit added to it. In case a disk inside the RAID stops working, your websites will continue working and when a new disk takes the place of the malfunctioning one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated by using the healthy and the parity drives. That way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is prevented. We also employ regular hard disks which work in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be saved on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive breakdowns.