RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for keeping data on multiple hard disk drives which work together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one single drive is split into separate ones through virtualization software. Either way, the very same information is stored on all drives and the key advantage of employing such a setup is that in the event that a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the remaining ones. Employing a RAID also enhances the performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard drives are used, whether writing is done on all drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors suggest that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types could differ.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This sort of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it works by using the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data saved on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In the event that one of the disks fails, your websites will continue working from the other ones and as soon as we replace the bad one, the data that will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives as well as the data from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file properly and to confirm the integrity of the information duplicated on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the content you upload to your cloud hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all hard drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we offer work in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data copied on this type of a hard drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be cloned on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the remaining hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue working normally and the faulty drive will not impact the adequate 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 revolutionary cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers called checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.