Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on several hard disks concurrently. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the HDDs which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is the fact that they all operate as a single unit where info is saved. The key advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy since the data on all of the drives will be the same all of the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the info will still be available on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well because the reading and writing processes can be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different sorts of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance can vary depending on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all drives real-time or it is written on a single drive and afterwards mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etc.
RAID in Shared Website Hosting
The advanced cloud hosting platform where all shared website hosting accounts are created employs fast NVMe drives instead of the traditional HDDs, and they work in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disk drives work together and at least a single one is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the other drives, it's cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is carried out for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified using the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, therefore absolutely nothing will be lost and there will not be any service disturbances. This is an additional level of protection for your data in addition to the state-of-the-art ZFS file system which uses checksums to make sure that all the data on our servers is intact and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be defective, it will be removed from the RAID without interrupting the functioning of the websites as the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info that will be cloned on it will be a combination between the info on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. That is done so as to ensure that the information that is being copied is accurate, so once the new drive is rebuilt, it could be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your information because the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all of the copies of your files on the various drives to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Web Hosting
The NVMe drives that we use on the physical machines where we create virtual private servers operate in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact all of the time. At least a single drive is employed for parity - one bit of info is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive stops working, it is replaced and the information which will be duplicated on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the correct information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be used in the RAID afterwards. We also use hard disk drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so if you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you'll use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unexpected hardware malfunction.