A systems administrator receives an automated alert for a virtualized Windows file server. The monitoring dashboard shows the following during normal business hours:
Free space on the primary data volume: 8 %
Disk IOPS utilization: 25 % of the storage array's rated maximum
CPU utilization: 15 %
Network utilization: 20 % of the 1 Gb/s link
Which of the following should the administrator do first to address the server's most immediate risk?
Upgrade the virtual NIC to 10 Gb/s to improve throughput.
Enable CPU and memory overcommit features in the hypervisor.
Add additional vCPU cores to the virtual machine.
Increase the storage volume size or provision additional disk capacity.
Capacity monitoring tracks how much of a resource is left, while utilization monitoring tracks how hard that resource is working. The file server is using only a small fraction of its available IOPS, CPU, and network bandwidth, so performance-related utilization is not the concern. However, only 8 % free disk space remains, well past the common 15-20 % safety threshold many tools alert on. If the volume fills up, new writes will fail, causing application errors and potential data loss. The quickest mitigation is to increase the size of the existing volume or add additional storage capacity. Adding CPU, upgrading the NIC, or enabling overcommit will not alleviate the looming capacity exhaustion.