A large amount of data was deleted from a Volume Group but not reclaimed as usable storage. What should the administrator do to recover the storage capacity?

Unmounting and remounting the Volume Group can help recover usable storage capacity when a significant amount of data has been deleted. This process refreshes the system's recognition of the available space. When data is deleted, the underlying storage may not immediately reflect this available capacity until an action, such as unmounting and remounting, triggers the system to recognize and reclaim the free space.

In many file systems, deleted spaces might not be visible until the storage device is instructed to recheck its available space—this is where unmounting becomes effective. After the Volume Group is unmounted, the system can re-evaluate the allocation, and by remounting, it recognizes the reclaimed storage.

While there are other methods, such as enabling unmap or shrinking the Volume Group, those options might be limited by the specific configurations in place or might not immediately trigger the reclamation of space that has been deleted efficiently. Running defragmentation also does not directly address space reclamation in situations of deletions but rather organizes the existing data. Therefore, unmounting and remounting is the most straightforward and effective approach for immediate recovery of storage capacity in this context.