This ITIL4F practice question tests your understanding of itil management practices. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
An event monitoring system detects that a server's disk usage has reached 85%. Which type of event is this?
Exception event
Why wrong: Exception events indicate a breach of threshold, usually requiring immediate action.
Critical event
Why wrong: Critical events are severe and require immediate response.
Warning event
Why wrong: A warning event would indicate a threshold that requires attention, but 85% is often informational.
Informational event
85% disk usage is below a critical threshold and indicates normal operation, so it is informational.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Informational event
An informational event is used to notify that a predefined threshold has been reached but does not require immediate action. In this case, 85% disk usage is a standard monitoring threshold that indicates a normal operational state, not a failure or critical condition. ITIL 4 defines informational events as those that provide awareness of a situation that is within normal operating parameters.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Exception event
Why it's wrong here
Exception events indicate a breach of threshold, usually requiring immediate action.
Critical event
Why it's wrong here
Critical events are severe and require immediate response.
Warning event
Why it's wrong here
A warning event would indicate a threshold that requires attention, but 85% is often informational.
Informational event
Why this is correct
85% disk usage is below a critical threshold and indicates normal operation, so it is informational.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse 'warning' with any threshold alert, but ITIL 4 distinguishes informational events as those that are purely for awareness and do not require a response, unlike warnings which imply potential future risk.
Detailed technical explanation
In ITIL 4, event types are categorized by severity and required response: informational events (e.g., SNMP traps with severity 'Informational' or syslog level 6), warning events (e.g., syslog level 4), and exception/critical events (e.g., syslog level 2 or 1). Many monitoring tools like Nagios or Zabbix define thresholds where 80-85% usage triggers an informational alert, while 90% triggers a warning and 95% triggers a critical alert. The exact thresholds can be customized, but the ITIL framework classifies based on the intended action, not the raw percentage.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A practitioner preparing for the ITIL4F exam encounters this exact type of scenario on the job. The correct answer here is not the most general option — it is the best answer for the specific constraint described. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Real exam questions reward reading the full scenario before eliminating options, because the constraint defines which answer fits.
What to study next
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FAQ
ITIL Management Practices — This question tests ITIL Management Practices — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Informational event — An informational event is used to notify that a predefined threshold has been reached but does not require immediate action. In this case, 85% disk usage is a standard monitoring threshold that indicates a normal operational state, not a failure or critical condition. ITIL 4 defines informational events as those that provide awareness of a situation that is within normal operating parameters.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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