An Azure VM has a single data disk that must be attached to another Azure VM. To minimize the amount of time VMs are offline, which action should you take first?

To minimize downtime, the most efficient first step is to detach the data disk from the current VM. Detaching the disk makes it available for attachment to another VM without requiring the source VM to be stopped. Stopping the VM that currently has the data disk is unnecessary and causes more downtime for that VM. Stopping the target VM is also not the first step; the disk must be detached first. Deleting the VM that currently has the data disk would destroy the VM and its associated resources, which is not the goal.