RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of saving data on several hard disks that 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 independent ones through virtualization software. In any case, exactly the same info is saved on all the drives and the key benefit of employing this kind of a setup is that if a drive fails, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also boosts the overall performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the data is synced between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors indicate that the error tolerance and the performance between the different RAID types may differ.
RAID in Hosting
Our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform where all hosting accounts are made uses fast SSD drives as opposed to the classic HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, several hard drives function together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. Simply put, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even if a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the information can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data recorded on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is another level of protection for your information in addition to the top-notch ZFS file system which uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The RAID type that we use for the cloud Internet hosting platform where your semi-dedicated hosting account will be created is called RAID-Z. What is different about it is that at least one of the disks is used as a parity drive. In simple terms, whenever any data is copied on this specific drive, one more bit is added to it and in the event that a problematic disk is replaced, the data that will be copied on it is a combination of the data on the other hard disks in the RAID and that on the parity one. It's done this way to ensure that the data is intact. Throughout this process, your websites will be up and running normally since RAID-Z enables an entire drive to fail without causing any service disruptions and it simply works by using one of the other ones as the main production drive. Employing RAID-Z together with the ZFS file system which uses checksums to warrant that no data shall get silently corrupted on our servers, you will not have to worry about the integrity of your files.
RAID in VPS
The SSD drives that we use on the physical machines where we set up virtual private servers function in RAID to ensure that any content you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is replaced and the information which will be cloned on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. It's done this way to make sure that the required info is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be a part of the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disks functioning in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any sudden hardware failure.