PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company runs its SAP S/4HANA production workload on AWS using an 8xlarge instance with 2,000 GB of gp3 storage for /usr/sap and 6,000 GB of io2 Block Express with 64,000 IOPS for /hana/data and /hana/log. The system experiences intermittent performance degradation during peak hours, particularly for batch jobs that heavily write to the database. The SAP team reports that the database response time spikes from under 5 milliseconds to over 200 milliseconds during these periods. The AWS account has a default EBS IOPS limit of 80,000 per region. The current io2 volume is attached as a single volume. Which combination of actions would resolve the performance issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume increasing IOPS on a single volume or moving to a larger instance alone will solve the performance issue, ignoring the fundamental single-volume throughput and IOPS ceiling that requires striping across multiple volumes to scale.
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
✓
Split the /hana/data volume into multiple io2 volumes, configure them as a RAID 0 stripe, and attach each to a separate EBS-optimized connection. Increase total provisioned IOPS to 80,000 distributed across volumes.
Splitting the /hana/data volume into multiple io2 volumes and configuring them as a RAID 0 stripe distributes I/O across multiple EBS-optimized connections, effectively increasing the available throughput and IOPS beyond the limits of a single volume attachment. This approach also allows the total provisioned IOPS to reach 80,000, which is the regional default limit, while each individual volume stays within its own IOPS ceiling, thus resolving the database response time spikes during peak batch write operations.
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 the io2 volumes with larger gp3 volumes and increase the volume size to 8,000 GB to benefit from gp3 baseline performance.
Why it's wrong here
gp3 does not provide consistent low-latency high-IOPS for SAP HANA; io2 is recommended.
- ✓
Split the /hana/data volume into multiple io2 volumes, configure them as a RAID 0 stripe, and attach each to a separate EBS-optimized connection. Increase total provisioned IOPS to 80,000 distributed across volumes.
Why this is correct
RAID 0 across multiple volumes increases aggregate IOPS and throughput, leveraging multiple EBS connections and avoiding single-volume limits.
- ✗
Migrate to a larger instance type with higher EBS-optimized bandwidth and increase the volume IOPS to 80,000.
Why it's wrong here
Does not address single-volume bottleneck; still limited by single volume queue depth.
- ✗
Increase the provisioned IOPS on the existing io2 volume to 80,000 IOPS to stay within the default limit.
Why it's wrong here
Single volume may still be bottlenecked; also 80,000 IOPS may exceed per-instance bandwidth.
Visual reference
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
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.