A cloud administrator wants to apply patches in an isolated copy of the production virtual server to assess the impact. Which of the following activities would BEST achieve this objective?

Clustering aggregates multiple servers for high availability or load balancing and does not provide an isolated copy for individual VM patch testing.

A snapshot captures the exact state of a virtual machine at a specific point in time, allowing the creation of an isolated, temporary copy for patch testing or providing a restore point to revert to if issues occur.

An image backup is a full copy of a VM for disaster recovery, which is generally a heavier and slower process than using a snapshot for quick, temporary patch impact assessment.

Cloning creates a full, independent duplicate of a VM, which can be used for testing, but a snapshot is often a more lightweight and agile solution specifically designed for quick point-in-time capture and temporary testing environments.