RAID
What is RAID? Just how does RAID work? Discover the benefits of employing a RAID-equipped server.
RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology for saving data on a number hard disks that function together as one logical unit. The drives could be physical or logical i.e. in the second case one single drive is split into separate ones through virtualization software. In any case, the same information is stored on all drives and the main benefit of employing such a setup is that in case a drive breaks down, the data shall still be available on the remaining ones. Having a RAID also enhances the performance since the input and output operations will be spread among a couple of drives. There are several types of RAID based on how many hard disks are used, whether writing is carried out on all of the drives in real time or just on one, and how the info is synchronized between the drives - whether it is recorded in blocks on one drive after another or all of it is mirrored from one on the others. These factors suggest that the fault tolerance as well as the performance between the various RAID types can differ.
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RAID in Cloud Website Hosting
The NVMe drives that our cutting-edge cloud Internet hosting platform employs for storage operate in RAID-Z. This kind of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it employs the so-called parity disk - a special drive where data stored on the other drives is duplicated with an additional bit added to it. In case one of the disks fails, your sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the faulty one, the info that will be cloned on it will be rebuilt from what is stored on the rest of the drives together with the info from the parity disk. This is done in order to be able to recalculate the bits of every single file properly and to authenticate the integrity of the info cloned on the new drive. This is another level of security for the info which you upload to your
cloud website hosting account along with the ZFS file system that analyzes a special digital fingerprint for each and every file on all drives in real time.