RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology that allows a system to employ a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. This type of a setup has two key advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive stops working, the information will be accessed from the remaining ones, and the second one is better performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. You can find different RAID types based on what amount of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both performed from all drives simultaneously, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and so on. According to the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.
RAID in Shared Website Hosting
The SSD drives that our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage work in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is intended to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information saved on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. If one of the disks stops functioning, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the information which will be duplicated on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file properly and to verify the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is an additional level of security for the info that you upload to your shared website hosting account together with the ZFS file system which compares a special digital fingerprint for every single file on all drives in real time.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The SSD drives that are used for storing any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this kind of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with another one, what information will be cloned on the latter will be a mix calculated between the data on the remaining drives and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive shall be accurate. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue functioning normally and the faulty drive will not have an effect on the adequate operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with SSDs in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses special digital identifiers identified as checksums in order to avoid silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Hosting
All virtual private server accounts that our company offers are created on physical servers which take advantage of SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one additional bit is added to the information duplicated on it and if a main disk stops working, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the right info is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. At the same time, your Internet sites will remain online since all the info will still load from at least 1 more hard drive. In case you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the data will be kept on standard disk drives that also operate in RAID as we would like to make sure that any type of content you upload will be safe and sound all the time. Employing multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers permits us to offer fast and reliable hosting service.