What maintenance activity should a cloud provider perform to resolve IP address conflicts affecting user traffic?

To effectively resolve IP address conflicts that are affecting user traffic, removing stale DNS entries is crucial. Stale DNS entries can lead to incorrect resolution of IP addresses, causing users to be directed to the wrong resources or leading to conflicts between devices trying to communicate with multiple references to the same IP address.

When stale DNS entries persist, especially after IP addresses have been reassigned, they can cause traffic to be routed improperly, which negatively impacts the availability and performance of services. By running a script to remove these stale DNS entries, a cloud provider can ensure that all domain names resolve to the correct, current IP addresses, facilitating proper communication and traffic flow without disruptions caused by conflicts.

Maintaining updated and accurate DNS records is vital to the seamless operation of cloud services and to mitigate the risk of conflicts that may disrupt user access to critical resources. The other options, while important for overall cloud management, do not directly address the issue of IP address conflicts in the context of DNS resolution.