Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a method of keeping content on a number of hard disk drives simultaneously. A RAID could be software or hardware based on the drives that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is that they all operate as one single unit where info is saved. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all of the drives will be exactly the same all the time, so even if some drive fails for whatever reason, the information will still be present on the rest of the drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well since the reading and writing processes could be split between different drives, so a single one will never be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance can vary depending on the specific setup - whether your data is written on all drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and after that mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The hard disks which we use for storage with our revolutionary cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but extremely fast NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we work with. All of the content that you upload to the cloud hosting account will be saved on multiple hard drives and at least one will be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where a further bit is added to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it will be changed without service disruptions and the information will be rebuilt on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done to guarantee the integrity of the info and together with the real-time checksum verification which the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you won't ever need to worry about the loss of any information no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we provide operate in RAID-Z. This is a specific setup where one or more hard drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data copied on this kind of a hard drive. In the event that a disk fails and is replaced with a new one, what info will be copied 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 make sure that the data on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the process, the RAID will continue functioning adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't have an effect on the adequate operation of your sites at all. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is an amazing addition to the ZFS file system which runs on our state-of-the-art cloud platform with regard to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers named checksums to avoid silent data corruption.