A technician logs into a virtual machine and makes several changes, including IP address configuration and printer driver installation. Which of the following should the technician have performed…

Exporting a complete VM to a backup image server is a time-intensive operation suited for long-term archival backup, not a quick pre-change safeguard taken immediately before making live configuration changes.

Saving a VM as a complete file is essentially an export or clone operation, which is heavyweight and slow compared to a snapshot and is not the standard practice before routine configuration changes.

A snapshot captures the exact state of a virtual machine at a specific point in time, including memory, disk, and settings. If the IP configuration or driver installation causes issues, the technician can instantly revert to the pre-change state. Snapshots are the standard pre-change safety measure in virtualized environments because they are fast to create and fast to restore.

A full system image backup is a comprehensive disaster recovery measure that takes significant time and resources, making it impractical as a routine step before minor configuration changes on a virtual machine.