RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to employ several hard drives as a single logical unit. To put it differently, all drives are used as one and the information on all of them is the same. Such a configuration has two huge advantages over using a single drive to save data - the first is redundancy, so if one drive doesn't work, the data will be accessible through the others, and the second is better performance since the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among different drives. There are different RAID types based on how many drives are employed, if reading and writing are both handled 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 many others. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance may differ.
RAID in Shared Web Hosting
Our state-of-the-art cloud hosting platform where all shared web hosting accounts are generated uses quick SSD drives rather than the standard HDDs, and they operate in RAID-Z. With this configuration, a number of hard disk drives function together and at least one of them is a dedicated parity disk. In simple terms, when data is written on the rest of the drives, it is cloned on the parity one adding an extra bit. This is done for redundancy as even in case a drive fails or falls out of the RAID for whatever reason, the data can be rebuilt and verified thanks to the parity disk and the data stored on the other ones, which means that nothing will be lost and there won't be any service disorders. This is one more level of security for your data along with the state-of-the-art ZFS file system that uses checksums to ensure that all of the data on our servers is undamaged and is not silently corrupted.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The info uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in this kind of a configuration is used for parity - any time data is cloned on it, an extra bit is added. If a disk happens to be faulty, it will be taken out of the RAID without interrupting the operation of the sites since the data will load from the remaining drives, and when a new drive is included, the data which will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other hard drives in the RAID. This is done to guarantee that the information which is being cloned is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it could be integrated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud Internet hosting platform compares a special checksum of all copies of your files on the various drives in order to avoid any chance of silent data corruption.
RAID in VPS Hosting
All virtual private server accounts which our company provides are generated on physical servers that use SSD drives operating in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the info duplicated on it and in case a main disk breaks down, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the damaged hard disk so that the right data is recovered on the new drive included in the RAID. In the mean time, your sites will still be online as all the information will still load from at least one more drive. In the event that you add regular backups to your VPS plan, a copy of the info will be stored on standard hard disks which also operate in RAID since we would like to make sure that any type of website content you add will be protected all of the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.