While doing the exam I was going through the previous week, I happened to notice a funny, yet extremely obvious similarity between the subject and World of Warcraft. Part of the assignment was about Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID). The rest should be, as mentioned, fairly obvious. Of course, a similarity isn’t that funny if it’s only because the names are alike, so I started to look for something more, since the assignment was about improving a system with RAID level 0, to RAID level 5, and why it’s better.
A RAID contains disks (insert funny and original comment, which includes the almighty Captain Obvious, here), while a raid contains members. Thus, a member of a raid resembles a disk of a RAID. Lower levels of RAID doesn’t contain any real security for lost data if a disk starts failing, and the data will be lost forever. The same applies to a raid where the members takes damage, and there’s no healer around. One or more of the members will eventually die.
So, the security in the shape of parity is introduced to the RAID. When a disk fails, the data is not really lost, as it can be restored by comparing the data on the remaining disks. A healer joins a raid, and ensures that the members stay alive longer, and thus be more efficient in the long run. This is basically the idea of RAID level 4, but it has a flaw; there’s one disk that takes care of all the parity, and as such it will be used a lot more than the average disk. One healer in a raid will likewise have a bit of trouble, and will be a lot more stressed than the non-healing members.
At RAID level 5, the parity is spread amongst the disks, and thus the disks will be evenly used, providing an overall longer lifetime. Raidwise, the healing is represented as every member in the raid having minor healing-skills, a potion, or something likewise. Point being, the overall stress is just as high on every player.
Lastly, this scenario doesn’t really support combat resurrections, as the raid has to be out of combat for some time, before a member can be restored to life. I’ll leave it to you, as to what that resembles in RAID-lingo.
