PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
A company is running SAP ERP on AWS and wants to reduce costs by right-sizing the EC2 instances. The administrator has identified that the current instances are over-provisioned for CPU and memory. Which AWS service can provide recommendations for instance type changes based on historical usage?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse AWS Trusted Advisor's general cost optimization checks (which include idle instance detection) with Compute Optimizer's specific right-sizing recommendations based on historical utilization, leading them to select Trusted Advisor instead of the service designed for this exact purpose.
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
✓
AWS Compute Optimizer
AWS Compute Optimizer is the correct service because it uses machine learning to analyze historical utilization metrics (CPU, memory, I/O, network) from Amazon CloudWatch and provides actionable recommendations for right-sizing EC2 instances, including instance type changes. For SAP ERP workloads, it can identify over-provisioned instances by comparing actual usage patterns against the performance characteristics of different instance families, directly addressing the goal of reducing costs without compromising 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 cost optimization checks but less specific instance recommendations.
- ✓
AWS Compute Optimizer
Why this is correct
Compute Optimizer uses machine learning to recommend optimal AWS resources.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch provides raw metrics, not recommendations.
- ✗
AWS Cost Explorer
Why it's wrong here
Cost Explorer shows historical cost data, not instance recommendations.
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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.