An administrator has just completed a bare-metal installation of a new Windows Server 2022 instance. The server is being added to an existing environment that uses a centralized monitoring and management platform. To ensure the new server is managed according to company policy and can be monitored for performance metrics like CPU, memory, and disk utilization, which of the following should the administrator install next?
The correct answer is a monitoring agent. After a base operating system is installed, a monitoring agent is a required utility for integrating the server into a centralized management system. This agent collects performance data (CPU, memory, disk I/O, etc.) and health status information, then forwards it to a central monitoring server.
A virtualization hypervisor is a server role used to create and manage virtual machines; it would not be installed to monitor the host OS itself. While an updated network driver might be needed for optimal performance, a functional driver is typically installed with the OS, and it is not the specific utility that connects to a monitoring platform. Modern server operating systems like Windows Server 2022 already include a powerful scripting runtime (PowerShell 5.1), so while an admin might choose to upgrade it, it is not the primary application required to enable centralized monitoring.