PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
A company migrates its SAP HANA database to an EC2 instance with 1 TB of memory. The system is used for both OLTP and OLAP workloads. The performance team notices that memory utilization is high but the CPU is underutilized. Which configuration change would best improve overall system throughput?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume high memory utilization means the instance is undersized and needs a different instance type, but the real bottleneck is inefficient memory access due to small page sizes, not a lack of memory capacity.
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
✓
Enable HANA Large Pages to reduce TLB misses and improve memory access
HANA Large Pages (also known as huge pages) reduce the number of Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) misses by mapping large contiguous memory regions with fewer page table entries. In a 1 TB memory system, the default 4 KB page size causes excessive TLB pressure, especially under OLAP workloads with large data scans. Enabling large pages improves memory access efficiency, allowing the CPU to spend less time on page walks and more time on actual processing, thereby improving overall throughput without requiring a hardware change.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use a smaller instance type with higher CPU to memory ratio
Why it's wrong here
Smaller instance would have less memory, causing issues.
- ✓
Enable HANA Large Pages to reduce TLB misses and improve memory access
Why this is correct
Large pages improve memory access efficiency.
- ✗
Increase the swap space on the instance store volumes
Why it's wrong here
Swap increases latency.
- ✗
Disable HANA compression to reduce CPU overhead
Why it's wrong here
Compression reduces memory usage; disabling it increases memory pressure.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every PAS-C01 question from scratch — 1,616 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or 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.