RAID, which stands short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to employ a number of hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all the drives are used as one and the data on all of them is the same. This kind of a configuration has 2 major advantages over using a single drive to store data - the first one is redundancy, so in the event that one drive stops working, the data will be accessed from the others, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be spread among multiple drives. There're different RAID types in accordance with what number of drives are used, whether reading and writing are both performed from all of the drives concurrently, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. According to the exact setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.

RAID in Shared Hosting

The hard disks that we employ for storage with our ground-breaking cloud hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but fast NVMes. They function in RAID-Z - a special setup created for the ZFS file system which we employ. All the content that you upload to your shared hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be replaced with no service disturbances and the info will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to concern yourself with losing any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives that are used for storing any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts which we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific configuration where one or more disk drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will include an extra bit to any data copied on such a drive. In case that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what information will be duplicated on the latter shall be a combination calculated between the data on the other hard disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the data on the new drive will be accurate. During the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the faulty drive won't have an impact on the adequate operation of your Internet sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files because ZFS uses specific digital identifiers identified as checksums to avoid silent data corruption.