PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is running SAP ERP on AWS and notices performance degradation during peak hours. The application servers are in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. Which configuration change would best handle the increased load?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume increasing instance limits (Option A) or using memory-based scaling (Option B) is sufficient, but the exam tests understanding that SAP ERP is CPU-bound and requires a dynamic, metric-driven scaling policy like target tracking to effectively handle peak loads.
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 Auto Scaling policy to use a target tracking policy based on CPU utilization
D is correct because SAP ERP workloads are typically CPU-bound during peak hours, and a target tracking policy based on CPU utilization automatically adjusts the Auto Scaling group to maintain a target CPU metric (e.g., 70%), ensuring the application servers scale out proactively to handle increased load without manual intervention. This approach aligns with SAP's recommended scaling strategy on AWS, as it directly addresses the performance degradation caused by high CPU demand.
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 minimum and maximum instance count in the Auto Scaling group
Why it's wrong here
Static changes do not dynamically handle peak hours efficiently.
- ✗
Configure a step scaling policy based on memory utilization
Why it's wrong here
Memory utilization is not the best metric for scaling SAP app servers.
- ✗
Replace the Application Load Balancer with a Network Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
This does not address application server capacity.
- ✓
Change the Auto Scaling policy to use a target tracking policy based on CPU utilization
Why this is correct
CPU utilization is a more relevant metric for SAP application server load.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,616 original PAS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. 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.