Scenario: A company plans to upgrade its hardware to improve DB2 performance. What factors should they consider before making this decision?

Option 2, assessing scalability requirements, involves understanding the expected growth in data volume, user concurrency, and application complexity to determine if the current hardware can accommodate future demands. This step is essential for ensuring that the upgraded hardware can support anticipated increases in workload without experiencing performance bottlenecks. Evaluating current hardware utilization (option 1) helps identify existing resource constraints but may not provide insight into future scalability needs. Analyzing workload characteristics (option 3) helps assess the types of operations and resource demands expected from the system, guiding hardware selection based on workload patterns. Considering cost implications (option 4) is important for budgeting and ROI analysis but should be balanced with performance requirements and scalability considerations.