RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to use many hard drives as one single logical unit. Simply put, all the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. Such a setup has two key advantages over using just a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so in the event that one drive stops working, the data will be accessible from the others, and the second one is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. You can find different RAID types depending on how many drives are employed, if reading and writing are both handled from all the drives at the same time, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etc. Depending on the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance vary.
RAID in Cloud Web Hosting
The hard disks that we use for storage with our innovative cloud hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system that we use. All of the content that you upload to the cloud web hosting account will be saved on multiple disk drives and at least one of them shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be replaced without any service disruptions and the information will be rebuilt 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 so as to ensure the integrity of the data and along with the real-time checksum authentication which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never need to be concerned about the loss of any information no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The NVMe drives that are used for saving any website content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we offer operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more hard drives are used for parity i.e. the system will add an extra bit to any data copied on such a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be cloned on the latter shall be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the information on the new drive will be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the malfunctioning drive won't have an impact on the adequate operation of your sites in any way. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our revolutionary cloud platform with respect to preserving the integrity of your files since ZFS uses special digital identifiers called checksums to prevent silent data corruption.