RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of storing data on a number hard drives which operate together as one single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the second case a single drive is split into individual ones through virtualization software. Either way, the same data is saved on all of the drives and the main advantage of employing this kind of a setup is that in case a drive stops working, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also improves the overall performance since the input and output operations will be spread among several drives. There are several types of RAID depending on how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the data is synchronized between the hard drives - whether it's written in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors imply that the fault tolerance and the performance between the various RAID types could differ.
RAID in Shared Hosting
The hard disks which we use for storage with our top-notch cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but high-speed NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup designed for the ZFS file system that we employ. Any content that you add to your shared hosting account will be kept on multiple disk drives and at least 1 will be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an extra bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced with no service interruptions and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the remaining disks. This is done so as to ensure the integrity of the info and along with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you will never have to be concerned about losing any info no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The NVMe drives that are used for saving any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data duplicated on such a drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced 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 ensure that the data on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working normally and the faulty drive won't affect the normal operation of your sites in any way. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an outstanding addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers called checksums so as to prevent silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
If you use one of our VPS server packages, any content which you upload will be stored on NVMe drives which work in RAID. At least 1 drive is used for parity so as to ensure the integrity of your data. In simple terms, this is a special drive where information is copied with one bit added to it. If a disk from the RAID stops functioning, your websites will continue working and when a new disk substitutes the defective one, the bits of the information that will be copied on it are calculated using the healthy and the parity drives. This way, any potential for corrupting data during the process is averted. We also employ standard hard disks which function in RAID for storing backup copies, so in case you include this service to your VPS package, your site content will be kept on multiple drives and you'll never need to worry about its integrity even in the event of multiple drive failures.