Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of saving content on multiple hard drives at the same time. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, yet what is common between them is that they all perform as just one single unit where info is kept. The biggest advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the info on all of the drives is the same all the time, so even in the event that some drive fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the other drives. The overall performance is also enhanced as the reading and writing processes will be split between various drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the effectiveness and fault tolerance may vary depending on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all drives real-time or it's written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, and many others.
RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The NVMe drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is created to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a specific drive where data located on the other drives is cloned with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops functioning, your websites shall continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the info which will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the remaining drives together with the data from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the bits of each and every file adequately and to validate the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the content which you upload to your cloud website hosting account along with the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for every single file on all drives in real time.
RAID in VPS Servers
The NVMe drives that we use on the machines where we generate VPS servers work in RAID to ensure that any content which you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of data is added to any data copied on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data which will be copied on it is calculated between the rest of the drives and the parity one. That’s done to make sure that the correct data is copied and that not a single file is corrupted because the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. Also, we use hard drives operating in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service since your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any unexpected hardware malfunction.