Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard drives simultaneously. A RAID might be software or hardware depending on the hard drives which are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is that they all function as one single unit where data is kept. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy as the data on all the drives is the same all of the time, so even if some drive fails for some reason, the information will still be available on the other drives. The general performance is also enhanced since the reading and writing processes could be split between multiple drives, so a single one won't be overloaded. There are different kinds of RAIDs where the capabilities and fault tolerance could differ depending on the specific setup - whether information is written on all drives in real time or it's written on one drive and then mirrored on another, the number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Cloud Hosting

The disk drives which we use for storage with our outstanding cloud Internet hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but quick NVMes. They operate in RAID-Z - a special setup developed for the ZFS file system that we employ. All of the content that you add to your cloud hosting account will be stored on multiple drives and at least 1 will be employed as a parity disk. This is a specific drive where a further bit is included to any content copied on it. If a disk in the RAID fails, it will be replaced without service disruptions and the information will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk plus that on the remaining disks. This is done to ensure the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system runs on all drives, you'll never have to be concerned about losing any info no matter what.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

The NVMe drives which are used for holding any site content uploaded to the semi-dedicated hosting accounts that we provide work in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more drives are employed for parity i.e. the system will add an additional bit to any data duplicated on such a disk drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with another one, what information will be duplicated on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other drives and that on the parity one. This is done to ensure that the data on the new drive will be correct. During the procedure, the RAID will continue working adequately and the malfunctioning drive won't affect the proper operation of your sites in any respect. Working with NVMes in RAID-Z is a superb addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our top-notch cloud platform with regards to preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses unique digital identifiers referred to as checksums to prevent silent data corruption.