Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) Practice Exam

The primary function of parity in a RAID configuration is to provide redundancy and error correction. Parity is a technique used to ensure data integrity and availability in the event of a disk failure. When data is written to the array, parity information is calculated and stored alongside the data. This parity information allows the system to reconstruct lost data on a failed disk by using the data from the other disks in the array.

In the context of RAID levels that utilize parity, such as RAID 5 and RAID 6, the system can continue to function even when one or more disks fail, thanks to this error correction capability. By using parity, RAID configurations can maintain the integrity of the data and provide a level of fault tolerance that ensures critical information remains accessible, offering a significant advantage for data protection and system reliability.