PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
A company is running an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance. The operations team notices that the SAP application is responding slowly during peak hours. CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization and increased swap usage. Which combination of actions should the team take to resolve the performance issue?
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
✓
Resize the EC2 instance to a larger instance type with more vCPUs and memory.
Increasing both vCPUs and memory addresses the high CPU utilization and high swap usage (indicating memory pressure). Option A is wrong because Auto Scaling horizontally adds instances, which is not appropriate for a single SAP HANA database that typically runs vertically. Option C is wrong because compute-optimized instances prioritize CPU over memory, but the issue also involves memory shortage (swap usage). Option D is wrong because adding EBS volumes and read replicas targets storage and read scaling, not CPU or memory bottlenecks.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Auto Scaling for the EC2 instance to automatically add more instances.
Why it's wrong here
Auto Scaling is for horizontal scaling; SAP HANA typically runs on a single instance, and adding instances is not straightforward.
- ✓
Resize the EC2 instance to a larger instance type with more vCPUs and memory.
Why this is correct
Vertical scaling addresses both high CPU and memory pressure, reducing swap usage.
- ✗
Change the instance type to a compute-optimized instance to improve CPU performance.
Why it's wrong here
Compute-optimized instances may not have sufficient memory; memory-optimized instances are recommended for SAP HANA.
- ✗
Add more EBS volumes and increase the number of read replicas.
Why it's wrong here
Adding EBS volumes does not resolve CPU or memory issues; read replicas are not applicable to single HANA instance.
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