RAID, which is an acronym of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which permits a system to use a number of hard drives as one single logical unit. Put simply, all of the drives are used as one and the info on all of them is identical. This type of a configuration has two huge advantages over using just a single drive to store data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the info will be accessible from the others, and the second one is improved performance because the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among several drives. You can find different RAID types based on what number of drives are employed, if reading and writing are both done from all of the drives concurrently, if data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, etcetera. Depending on the particular setup, the error tolerance and the performance could differ.
RAID in Cloud Hosting
The drives which we use for storage with our outstanding cloud web hosting platform are not the traditional HDDs, but quick NVMes. They work in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we use. Any content that you upload to your cloud hosting account will be saved on multiple hard disks and at least one of them shall be employed as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In case a disk in the RAID stops functioning, it will be replaced without any service interruptions and the info will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits using the data on the parity disk plus that on the other disks. This is done in order to ensure the integrity of the information and along with the real-time checksum authentication that the ZFS file system performs on all drives, you won't ever need to concern yourself with losing any info no matter what.
RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting
The information uploaded to any semi-dedicated hosting account is saved on NVMe drives which work in RAID-Z. One of the drives in type of a setup is used for parity - each time data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. In case a disk happens to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the functioning of the sites because the data will load from the other drives, and when a brand new drive is included, the info which will be duplicated on it will be a combination between the data on the parity disk and data saved on the other hard disks in the RAID. That is done in order to ensure that the information that is being duplicated is correct, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an additional warranty for the integrity of your info as the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud web hosting platform compares a unique checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives so as to avoid any probability of silent data corruption.