A technician reads a hardware manufacturer's blog indicating a critical firmware update is available for the company's file server. Which of the following is the BEST course of action?

Downloading and installing directly from a centralized server skips any validation step, which could introduce instability or data loss to the production system.

A VM cannot accurately replicate physical hardware firmware interactions, making it an unsuitable environment for validating firmware updates.

Testing firmware on a non-production server closely mirrors the actual hardware environment, allowing the technician to validate stability and compatibility before risking the live file server. VMs cannot accurately simulate hardware-level firmware behavior, and non-production physical hardware provides the most realistic test scenario without business impact.

Applying an untested firmware update directly to a production file server risks causing downtime or data loss with no fallback plan.