A reliable ICT infrastructure, to avoid a single point of equipment failure, or even a single point of personnel problems.

The statement accurately describes a fundamental principle of high availability and reliability engineering within Information and Communications Technology (ICT). A reliable infrastructure is explicitly designed to prevent system-wide outages caused by the failure of a single component. This concept is known as eliminating the Single Point of Failure (SPOF). This principle is applied not only to hardware components (e.g., power supplies, network controllers, storage controllers) through redundancy but also to personnel through cross-training, knowledge sharing, and standardized documentation to ensure that the absence or error of one person does not halt critical operations.

This is a "TRUE or FALSE" question. The "False" option is incorrect because asserting that a reliable ICT infrastructure does not need to avoid single points of failure would contradict the core, universally accepted principles of fault tolerance, high availability, and business continuity that are central to modern systems design. The entire purpose of technologies like RAID, clustering, and redundant power supplies is to mitigate the risk of single points of failure.

1. Official Vendor Documentation:

Source: Huawei HCIA-Storage V5.0 Training Material.

Reference: In the "Storage System Architecture" chapter

the section on "Hardware Architecture of a Controller Enclosure" describes the redundant design of core components. It states

"Controllers work in active-active mode... If one controller is faulty

the other controller can take over its services immediately

ensuring service continuity." This design directly addresses the elimination of a single point of equipment failure. The same principle is applied to power supplies

fans

and interface modules to ensure high reliability.

2. Peer-reviewed Academic Publications / Textbooks:

Source: Saltzer

J. H.

& Kaashoek

M. F. (2009). Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction. Morgan Kaufmann.

Reference: Chapter 5

"Fault Tolerance

" Section 5.2

"Redundancy." The text explains

"The fundamental technique for tolerating a fault is to use redundancy... The goal is to design the system so that it has no single point of failure." This foundational text confirms that avoiding SPOFs is the primary strategy for building reliable and fault-tolerant systems.

3. University Courseware:

Source: Anderson

T.

& Dahlin

M. (2014). Operating Systems: Principles and Practice (2nd Edition). Recursive Books. (A standard textbook for university-level operating systems courses).

Reference: Chapter 12

"Reliability and Security." The chapter discusses availability and the use of redundancy to mask failures. It explicitly identifies that "a single point of failure is a system component whose failure will cause the entire system to fail." The text emphasizes that reliable systems are engineered to eliminate such points through redundant components and data replication.