RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on a number hard drives that operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case one drive is split into independent ones through virtualization software. In either case, the very same info is saved on all drives and the main benefit of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data will remain available on the other ones. Having a RAID also enhances the overall performance because the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several kinds of RAID dependant upon how many hard disks are used, whether writing is done on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or it is mirrored from one on the others. All these factors imply that the error tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types may vary.
RAID in Web Hosting
The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system which runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where info located on the other drives is duplicated with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops working, your sites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the info that will be copied on it will be recovered from what is stored on the other drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is performed so as to be able to recalculate the elements of every single file correctly and to authenticate the integrity of the data cloned on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the info that you upload to your web hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all of the disk drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The SSD drives that are used for holding any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on this type of a drive. If a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what information will be copied on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to make sure that the info on the new drive will be correct. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the normal operation of your sites in any respect. Using SSDs in RAID-Z is an impressive 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 because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers known as checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts which our company provides are created on physical servers which use SSD drives working in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one extra bit is included in the info duplicated on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it much easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the accurate info is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will still be online as all the info will still load from at least one more hard disk. In case you add regular backups to your VPS package, a copy of the information will be stored on standard disk drives which also operate in RAID because we would like to make sure that any content you add will be protected at all times. Working with multiple hard disks in RAID for all the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.