RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on a number hard disks that operate together as one single logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the latter case one single drive is divided into different ones through virtualization software. Either way, identical information is stored on all the drives and the main advantage of employing such a setup is that in case a drive fails, the data shall still be available on the other ones. Having a RAID also improves the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the information is synchronized between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors show that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can vary.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The hard drives which we employ for storage with our innovative cloud Internet hosting platform are not the classic HDDs, but quick NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we use. All the content that you upload to your cloud website hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least one of them will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced without service disturbances and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the information and together with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever have to concern yourself with the loss of any data no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for storing any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this kind of a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be copied on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating normally and the faulty drive will not impact the proper operation of your websites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.