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 from a centralized server addresses the update source but includes no testing phase, meaning a problematic firmware update could still be applied directly to production hardware.

Virtual machines do not emulate physical hardware firmware behavior, so testing in a VM cannot reliably confirm whether the update will function correctly on real server hardware.

Testing on a non-production server with the same physical hardware as the production file server accurately replicates the real environment and validates firmware compatibility and stability before any risk to live data or services. Unlike a virtual machine, physical hardware can expose true firmware-level behavior. This aligns with change management best practices by identifying issues in isolation before production deployment.

Immediately applying an untested firmware update to a production file server risks hardware failure, data loss, or unplanned downtime with no opportunity to identify compatibility issues first.