{"id":191905,"date":"2026-05-15T11:27:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T11:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stellarinfo.com\/blog\/?p=191905"},"modified":"2026-05-15T12:04:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T12:04:39","slug":"raid-in-cloud-storage-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stellarinfo.com\/blog\/raid-in-cloud-storage-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"RAID in cloud storage systems \u2014 Software-defined storage with RAID & virtual RAID arrays in the cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though RAID is popular among individuals, content creators, and small businesses, its principles of fault tolerance and data resilience can be used with large-scale cloud storage infrastructure. It can be used with Software-Defined Storage (SDS) and virtual RAID arrays. Let’s read further and understand how RAID in cloud storage systems works.<\/p>

What is RAID Storage?<\/h2>

Short for Redundant Array of Independent Drives, RAID<\/strong> is an advanced data storage technology that uses multiple physical storage drives to act as a single logical storage unit.<\/p>

Depending upon the purpose for building a RAID array<\/a> – data performance, redundancy against disk failures, or both – a configuration or level (RAID-0<\/strong>, RAID-1<\/strong>, RAID-5<\/strong>, etc.) is used.<\/p>

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\"Raid<\/figure>\n<\/div>

Understanding Cloud Storage<\/h2>

Generally, cloud uses the object storage<\/strong> architecture that stores and manages unstructured data as “objects<\/em>” rather than individual files and folders. These objects are stored in a single large repository, which may be distributed across multiple physical storage disks. Major cloud storage service providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, use this as their primary data storage type.<\/p>

Other types of data storage architectures in the cloud are Block Storage<\/strong> (used by Amazon Elastic Block Store, Azure Disk Storage, etc.) and File Storage<\/strong> (Google File Store, AWS Elastic File System, IBM Cloud, and more).<\/p>

The table below draws a clear distinction between the aforementioned types of cloud storage<\/a>.<\/p>

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\"Types<\/figure>\n<\/div>

Read more<\/strong>: Cloud Storage vs Local Backup<\/em><\/a><\/p>

RAID in Cloud Storage Systems: Reimagining Remote Storage for Resilience<\/h2>

As cloud storage depends on physical disks of servers at different nodes, there is a risk of data loss and failure due to outages, accidental deletion, ransomware attacks<\/a>, or permission issues. For example, object storage offers snapshots and backups for recovering lost data. Yet, recovery due to failed object storage results in service disruptions and downtimes. Therefore, to avoid these, RAID concepts are introduced at either the physical layer in the cloud (consisting of disks) or storage buckets to keep the cloud accessible even during a failure.<\/p>

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\"RAID<\/figure>\n<\/div>

Here is how cloud service providers the features of RAID to achieve resilience and data availability:<\/p>

Bare-Metal or VM Hosts:<\/h3>

Some cloud providers allow users to directly access traditional RAID setups like RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-10, or more, and configure them on bare-metal instances (hardware). This is vital for customers who need high-performance computing environments or want to meet stringent data redundancy requirements. With Virtual Machine disks, providers expose local RAID configurations at the host level. This allows VMs to benefit from enhanced redundancy and performance. Virtualizing RAID helps storage systems gain flexibility to adapt to specific workload requirements or tasks like database management or hosting an application that requires high I\/O throughput.<\/p>

Software-Defined Storage (SDS)<\/h3>

Software-defined storage platforms such as Ceph<\/strong>, MinIO<\/strong>, etc., use virtual devices (vdevs<\/strong>). Admins can configure these as mirrors or parity groups to organize storage pools via placement groups – a collection of dynamic objects that adapt to different resource requirements. Instead of hardware RAID, local parity or mirroring policies are applied to handle node failure, streamline rebuild, and ensure data availability. SDS solutions achieve this by turning physical disk drives into large, flexible pools of storage. These policies, once applied, dictate how data is distributed, protected, and retrieved across the cloud infrastructure.<\/p>

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\"SDS<\/figure>\n<\/div>

Object Storage<\/h3>

In case of object storage services, like Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)<\/strong> and OpenStack<\/strong>, physical RAID setup is replaced by an abstraction layer that uses erasure coding and replication for high durability. The abstraction layer exposes a storage bucket to the application, which can be tied to multiple buckets within the object storage provider. When the data is written on the exposed bucket, it is distributed into backend buckets, and parity (redundant piece) is introduced with each bucket. This allows organizations to use backend storage buckets without service interruption.<\/p>

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\"Object<\/figure>\n<\/div>

When a storage bucket in the backend becomes unavailable, gets deleted, or is encrypted by a ransomware, the abstraction layer can use the parity data (redundant piece) in the other buckets to rebuild the lost or inaccessible data. This is the self-healing feature, which is performed in real-time.<\/p>

What are the Types of RAID in Cloud Storage Systems?<\/h2>

Here are some commonly used RAID setups in cloud and how they are used:<\/p>