PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
This PAS-C01 practice question tests your understanding of design of sap workloads on aws. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company is running an SAP HANA database on AWS using an i3.16xlarge instance. The database storage is configured with multiple EBS gp2 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to meet IOPS requirements. During a workload spike, the application experiences increased latency and the database performance degrades. The CloudWatch metrics show high Average Queue Length (avg_queue_len) on the EBS volumes but not 100% utilization of the CPU. Which design change is MOST likely to resolve the performance issue?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "most likely"
Why it matters: Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Replace gp2 volumes with io2 Block Express volumes to provide consistent IOPS performance.
The high Average Queue Length indicates that the EBS volumes are saturating their IOPS capacity, causing requests to queue up. gp2 volumes have a burst-bucket model that can exhaust credits under sustained high I/O, leading to throttled performance. io2 Block Express volumes provide consistent, provisioned IOPS without burst limitations, directly resolving the queuing issue without requiring instance or stripe changes.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✓
Replace gp2 volumes with io2 Block Express volumes to provide consistent IOPS performance.
The clue word "most likely" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Move the database to an i3en.24xlarge instance to increase network and EBS bandwidth.
Why it's wrong here
Instance performance is not the bottleneck; the issue is storage queue depth.
✗
Enable EBS optimization on the existing instance to improve throughput.
Why it's wrong here
EBS optimization is enabled by default on i3 instances; this change is not applicable.
✗
Add two additional gp2 volumes to the RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.
Why it's wrong here
Adding more gp2 volumes may increase throughput but does not address the root cause of burst credit exhaustion.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates assume adding more volumes to a RAID 0 stripe will linearly increase IOPS, but they overlook that gp2 volumes have a shared burst credit pool per volume and that the bottleneck is IOPS credit exhaustion, not throughput.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
gp2 volumes provide baseline IOPS of 3 per GB and burst up to 3,000 IOPS for volumes ≤ 1 TiB using I/O credits; sustained high I/O depletes credits, causing throttling. io2 Block Express volumes offer up to 256,000 provisioned IOPS per volume with sub-millisecond latency, and they do not rely on a burst model, making them ideal for SAP HANA workloads that require consistent high IOPS. The RAID 0 stripe distributes I/O across volumes but does not increase the total IOPS credit pool—each volume still has its own independent credit bucket.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Design of SAP Workloads on AWS — This question tests Design of SAP Workloads on AWS — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Replace gp2 volumes with io2 Block Express volumes to provide consistent IOPS performance. — The high Average Queue Length indicates that the EBS volumes are saturating their IOPS capacity, causing requests to queue up. gp2 volumes have a burst-bucket model that can exhaust credits under sustained high I/O, leading to throttled performance. io2 Block Express volumes provide consistent, provisioned IOPS without burst limitations, directly resolving the queuing issue without requiring instance or stripe changes.
What should I do if I get this PAS-C01 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "most likely". Probability qualifier — the question wants the most probable cause or outcome, not a guaranteed one. Eliminate low-probability options.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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