Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of storing content on several hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, yet what’s common between them is that they all operate as one single unit where info is stored. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the info on all drives is exactly the same all of the time, so even in case one of the drives fails for some reason, the data will still be present on the other drives. The general performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes could be split between various drives, so a single one will not be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the efficiency and fault tolerance could differ depending on the exact setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what amount of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The drives which we use for storage with our innovative cloud web hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but super fast solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we use. All the content that you upload to your shared hosting account will be kept on multiple drives and at least one of them shall be used as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be changed with no service disruptions and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever need to be concerned about losing any information no matter what.
RAID in VPS Servers
All VPS server accounts that we offer are generated on physical servers that take advantage of SSD drives working in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the info cloned on it and in case a main disk stops working, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged drive so that the correct data is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your websites will stay online because all the data will still load from at least 1 other drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of your info will be kept on standard disk drives which also function in RAID because we want to make sure that any kind of website content you upload will be protected all of the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all of the main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.