PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
A company is running an SAP HANA database on an Amazon EC2 instance. The storage is configured with multiple EBS volumes striped using LVM. The company wants to ensure the database performance is consistent and can detect potential bottlenecks. Which AWS service should be used to monitor the EBS volume metrics such as Average Queue Length and Throughput?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse AWS Trusted Advisor's 'performance' checks (which only flag underutilized or overutilized resources at a high level) with the granular, real-time metrics that CloudWatch provides for EBS volumes, leading them to incorrectly select Trusted Advisor.
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
✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it provides detailed, granular monitoring of EBS volume metrics such as Average Queue Length (AverageQueueLength) and Throughput (VolumeReadBytes/VolumeWriteBytes). These metrics are collected at 1-minute intervals by default for EBS volumes attached to Nitro-based EC2 instances, enabling you to detect performance bottlenecks like high queue depths or throughput saturation. CloudWatch also allows you to set alarms and create dashboards for proactive monitoring of SAP HANA database storage performance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor offers best-practice checks but not detailed EBS metrics.
- ✗
Amazon Inspector
Why it's wrong here
Inspector is for security vulnerability assessments.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Why this is correct
CloudWatch provides EBS performance metrics.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API calls, not performance metrics.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This PAS-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,616-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.