RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology of keeping data on multiple hard drives that operate together as a single logical unit. The drives can be physical or logical i.e. in the aforementioned case a single drive is split into different ones through virtualization software. Either way, the same info is saved on all the drives and the main advantage of using this type of a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data will still be available on the remaining ones. Using a RAID also improves the performance as the input and output operations will be spread among a few drives. There are several types of RAID dependant upon how many drives are used, whether writing is performed on all the drives in real time or just on a single one, and how the info is synced between the drives - whether it's recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors mean that the error tolerance as well as the performance between the different RAID types can vary.
RAID in Web Hosting
Any content which you upload to your new web hosting account will be stored on fast SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to use the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds one more level of security for your website content on top of the real-time checksum validation that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the information is stored on a couple of disks and at least 1 is a parity disk - whenever information is recorded on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive stops functioning for some reason, the integrity of the info can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is saved on the production disks and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the operation of our system will not be interrupted and it'll continue operating efficiently until the malfunctioning drive is replaced and the information is synchronized on it.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers
The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is stored on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a setup is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the Internet sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a new drive is included, the info that will be cloned on it will be a blend between the data on the parity disk and data kept on the other hard disks in the RAID. This is done in order to ensure that the data that is being copied is correct, so as soon as the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra warranty for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform analyzes a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Servers
The physical servers where we generate VPS server employ super fast SSD drives that will boost the speed of your Internet sites significantly. The disk drives function in RAID to guarantee that you will not lose any data because of a power loss or a hardware breakdown. The production servers use a variety of drives where the data is stored and one disk is used for parity i.e. one bit is added to all of the information copied on it, which makes it much easier to restore the website content without loss in the event a main drive breaks down. If you pick our backup service, the information will be stored on an individual machine that uses standard hard-disk drives and even though there's no parity one in this case, they are also in a RAID to guarantee that we will have a backup copy of your content all of the time. With this setup your info will always be safe as it will be available on a lot of disk drives.