When working with client prospects to understand the differences between ORCS Web's dedicated solutions and cheap host options, many things come to light preventing an easy initial apples-to-apples comparison.

One of the common differences we see is that most hosts include a single hard drive with their standard server packages. Every dedicated solution that ORCS Web deploys has a hardware based RAID solution though. If the term RAID is unfamiliar to you, please see "What is RAID" for some background information.

Having multiple hard drives setup in a RAID configuration benefits both performance and redundancy. Server hard drives spin at a tremendous speeds and are the most likely hardware components of a server system to fail. With a RAID solution, the server stays online with no interruption and the failed hard drive can be hot-swapped while the server is online - no disruption to the hosting at all.

Personally, I would not deploy a production application to a server that did not have a RAID hard drive configuration. But, admittedly, not everyone shares this viewpoint. I've had some interesting dialog with a couple of people who say "who cares?". Their thought is that if their server drive fails, they'll just get the host to pull out the drive, put in a new one, restore the data, and get the server back online.

Well, let's consider some points for a non-RAID drive failure in a production server...

Do you have backups? I'm a HUGE believer in backups for all systems. I'll craft a future post about this point. But, if you are going to consider deploying to server with a single hard drive, you better be sure you have backups. Either manually export all your data to your personal PC on a regular basis, or be sure that your host is backing up your server.

When was the last backup? Any data written or changed on the drive between the most recent backup and the failure is going to be lost. In some situations this can be a huge deal. Lost orders; lost user accounts; lost records - all gone and never to be seen again.

How easy is the restore? If the drive that fails is just hosting standard web content only, or image files, or some other simple file type, the restore process might be fairly quick and easy. If the drive is holding the OS, or data files, or dozens of other types of complex or transactional data, it's a totally different situation. The time to actually run the restore process (getting the data back onto a new hard drive) is only part of the work. There is often a decent amount of manual work still required to get the system fully functioning again with the data current.

Swap the drives... Depending on the type of server you are running, the hard drive swap process can be really simple - pull a drive from the front of the system and slide in a new drive. Or it could be rather cumbersome - un-rack the server, open it up, pull the drive, put in a new one, close everything back up, re-rack the server. Also, if considering this option, best be sure the host can assure you they have the exact physical size, data size, and speed hard drive that you'll need, or you could be stuck without a quick replacement.

Considering those points - If the server was being backed up, and if there are spare drives sitting around, and if the restore process goes smoothly... you would still be looking at a few hours of downtime - maybe many hours depending on the specifics of the situation. And even after the server is restored you could be dealing with the potential fallout of data loss and the impact to your organization. How will your clients react? How about site visitors that stopped by and couldn't access the server?

Is it worth the risk to save a negligible amount of money on your hosting cost each month? Maybe in some situations where the users are extremely tolerant of downtime and data loss is not a concern. In the reality of today's world though, fewer and fewer Internet sites or applications have users that would tolerate such a situation when it could be so easily avoided.

I say go RAID and be safeguarded against hard drive failure.