A cloud provider's data center contracts with two different internet carriers for redundancy. A site survey reveals that both carriers' fiber enters the building through the same underground conduit and the same entry room. What is the most significant resilience problem, and how should it be fixed?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Two carriers sharing one conduit is like having two lifeboats tied to the same rope: one backhoe and you've lost both. Real redundancy means different physical routes and different ways into the building. Don't be fooled by two contracts on paper, because what you need is two paths in the dirt.
Full Explanation
Multi-vendor pathway connectivity is meant to remove single points of failure in a data center's external links. Contracting with two carriers achieves only commercial diversity if their cables share a conduit, a manhole, a building entrance or an entry room; a single construction accident, flood or fire at that shared point severs both. The correct design requires carriers to provide physically diverse routes from separate points of presence, entering the facility through separate entrances, ideally on different sides of the building, into separate meet-me or entry rooms, and documents this with route maps. Running different routing protocols is normal and does not affect physical resilience; standardizing the protocol would not help when a conduit is cut. Consolidating onto one carrier removes the commercial diversity too and creates a single point of failure in both the provider and the path; the attack surface argument does not outweigh the availability loss. Adding cooling to the entry room may be useful, but heat is not the hazard identified, and cooling cannot protect fiber from physical damage outside the building. Exam caveat: diversity must be verified physically, because carriers sometimes lease the same underlying fiber. Operational check: obtain and compare both carriers' route maps to confirm no shared conduit or entrance anywhere along the path.