PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is experiencing performance issues with their SAP ERP system on AWS. The system is running on an r5.4xlarge EC2 instance with gp2 EBS volumes. The database is SAP HANA. CloudWatch metrics show high write latency on the data volume. Which change would most likely improve performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume increasing gp2 volume size (Option A) is a simple fix for IOPS, but they overlook that gp2's burst model cannot sustain the high-write, low-latency requirements of SAP HANA, and that AWS explicitly recommends io2 volumes for production HANA workloads.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Change the volume type to io2 Block Express
SAP HANA is highly sensitive to storage latency, and the high write latency on the data volume indicates that gp2's burst model is insufficient for sustained write workloads. io2 Block Express provides consistent, sub-millisecond latency with provisioned IOPS up to 256,000, which directly addresses the performance bottleneck. This change aligns with AWS best practices for SAP HANA production workloads, which recommend io2 volumes for data and log volumes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the size of the gp2 volume to get more baseline IOPS
Why it's wrong here
Increasing gp2 size improves IOPS but io2 Block Express is better for latency.
- ✗
Move the database to a t3.large instance
Why it's wrong here
Moving the SAP HANA database to a t3.large instance would worsen performance because t3 instances use burstable CPU credits and have significantly less memory (8 GiB) than the r5.4xlarge (128 GiB), failing to meet SAP HANA’s in-memory database requirements. This option is tempting because t3 instances are cost-effective for variable-load workloads, and would be correct for a non-memory-intensive application with intermittent CPU usage.
- ✗
Enable EBS optimization on the instance
Why it's wrong here
EBS optimization is already enabled on r5 instances.
- ✓
Change the volume type to io2 Block Express
Why this is correct
io2 Block Express offers consistent low latency and high IOPS for SAP HANA.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PAS-C01 exam.