A systems administrator needs to install a new operating system on a single bare-metal server in a remote data center. The administrator has confirmed network connectivity to the server's dedicated out-of-band management port but is not authorized for physical access. Which of the following represents the MOST direct method to perform this installation?
Use the virtual media feature of the out-of-band management interface to mount the OS installer ISO.
Clone a master disk image to the server using a network file share.
Initiate a Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration of an existing server.
Configure a new Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) on the remote network segment.
The correct answer is to use the virtual media feature of the out-of-band management interface. Out-of-band management controllers like iDRAC, iLO, or IPMI provide remote KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) access and allow an administrator to mount an ISO file from their local machine or a network share as if it were a physical CD/DVD drive connected to the server. This is the most direct and common method for a single, remote, bare-metal OS installation when physical access is unavailable.
Configuring a PXE boot environment involves setting up DHCP, TFTP, and file servers, which is more complex and typically used for deploying OSs to multiple servers at scale, not for a single installation. Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration is the process of converting an existing physical server into a virtual machine, which is not applicable to installing a new OS on bare metal. Cloning a master disk image is a valid deployment method, but it is a block-level copy process, not a standard OS installation, and mounting an ISO via virtual media is a more fundamental and direct approach for a fresh installation.