PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company runs SAP ERP on AWS with an Oracle database on an r5.4xlarge instance. The system experiences performance degradation during month-end closing. Monitoring shows high CPU and I/O wait on the database server. The storage is EBS gp2 volumes. The company plans to migrate to SAP HANA in the future. What immediate change should be made to improve performance?
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 EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 to improve I/O performance and throughput.
Switching from gp2 to gp3 provides better baseline performance and higher throughput at lower cost. Option A (Implement RDS Oracle read replicas) is for RDS, not self-managed Oracle. Option B (Migrate to HANA immediately) is a longer-term solution, not immediate. Option C (Change EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3) is the correct immediate change to improve I/O performance. Option D (Increase instance size) might help CPU but is more expensive and does not directly address I/O wait.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Implement AWS RDS Oracle read replicas to offload reporting queries.
Why it's wrong here
The system is self-managed Oracle, not RDS; read replicas are not applicable.
- ✗
Migrate the database to SAP HANA immediately to improve performance.
Why it's wrong here
Migration is a major project; not an immediate fix.
- ✓
Change the EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 to improve I/O performance and throughput.
Why this is correct
gp3 offers more consistent performance and higher throughput at lower cost than gp2.
- ✗
Increase the EC2 instance size to r5.8xlarge to provide more CPU and memory.
Why it's wrong here
May help but is costly and does not address I/O wait specifically.
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
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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.