PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and wants to use storage that offers the highest IOPS for the SAP HANA database. Which storage option should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse General Purpose SSD (gp3) as sufficient for SAP HANA due to its lower cost, but fail to recognize that SAP HANA's certified configurations on AWS explicitly require io1/io2 volumes for production workloads to meet the strict IOPS and latency SLAs.
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
✓
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) volumes
For SAP HANA databases on AWS, the highest IOPS is achieved using Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) volumes, which are designed for latency-sensitive, I/O-intensive workloads. io2 volumes offer up to 256,000 IOPS per volume with 99.999% durability, making them the optimal choice for SAP HANA's demanding performance requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
General Purpose SSD (gp3) volumes
Why it's wrong here
gp3 has lower maximum IOPS compared to io2.
- ✓
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) volumes
Why this is correct
io2 volumes provide the highest IOPS and are recommended for production SAP HANA databases.
- ✗
Instance Store volumes
Why it's wrong here
Instance Store is ephemeral and data is lost on instance stop, not suitable for persistent database storage.
- ✗
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes
Why it's wrong here
st1 is for throughput-intensive workloads, not for database IOPS.
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 |
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