What is RAID?

What is RAID?
Dedicated servers are a popular choice for businesses that need reliable, high-performance servers. RAID arrays are a common method of distributing data across multiple storage devices for improved performance on dedicated servers. 

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Using RAID with dedicated servers increases redundancy and performance by using multiple hard disk drives to store and access data. RAID uses two or more disks and copies data onto them at the same time. 

RAID is used to create an exact copy (or mirror) of all of your data on two or more disks. If you had a drive failure on one of your disks, the other disk(s) would still be able to operate. This ensures that your data and server are protected and downtime is avoided. RAID can also improve your server’s performance by providing data on your hard drives more quickly. 

RAID levels
There are several RAID levels and users can choose different levels based on performance or fault tolerance.

Software RAID supports fewer levels than hardware-based RAID. Hardware RAID is also dependent on the type of controller that you have. Different controllers support various levels of RAID to dictate the kinds of disks you can use in an array, such as SAS, SATA and SSD. 

RAID benefits
Two of the most popular types of RAID levels are RAID 1 and RAID 5. They offer a cost-effective balance of redundancy and performance.

RAID 1 is a common RAID level that mirrors data across two separate storage drives for redundancy. If one drive fails, the other drive holds the identical data. This ensures that users can avoid data loss and maintain availability, even if hardware failed. The only downside is that you need to have double the amount of storage space.

RAID 5 is the most common RAID configuration. This RAID level provides better performance than mirroring as well as fault tolerance. With RAID 5, data and parity (additional data used for recovery) are set across three or more disks. It uses a technique called ‘data striping’ to ensure redundancy by distributing data across all of the drives in the array. If there was a storage failure, the affected data could be reconstructed based on the information held on the other drives.

To help you decide which RAID level is best for your application, contact our sales team on 0800 612 2524  and they will be happy to assist you with choosing the right solution.