An alternative solution is
<emphasis>parity
</emphasis>, implemented in
<acronym>RAID
</acronym> levels 2, 3, 4 and 5. Of these,
<acronym>RAID-5
</acronym> is the most interesting. As implemented in
<filename>vinum
</filename>, it is a variant on a striped organization which dedicates one block of each stripe to parity one of the other blocks. As implemented by
<filename>vinum
</filename>, a
<acronym>RAID-5
</acronym> plex is similar to a striped plex, except that it implements
<acronym>RAID-5
</acronym> by including a parity block in each stripe. As required by
<acronym>RAID-5
</acronym>, the location of this parity block changes from one stripe to the next. The numbers in the data blocks indicate the relative block numbers.