PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company runs SAP on AWS and needs to monitor the performance of its SAP HANA database. The operations team wants to receive alerts when the CPU utilization exceeds 90% for more than 5 minutes. Which TWO steps should be taken to set up this monitoring and alerting?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is that candidates may assume they need to create a CloudWatch metric filter to capture CPU utilization, but CPU utilization is a standard EC2 metric available by default in CloudWatch. No metric filter is needed.
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
✓
Configure an Amazon SNS topic to send email or SMS notifications when the alarm state is reached.
Amazon SNS is the standard AWS service for distributing notifications from CloudWatch alarms. By configuring an SNS topic to send email or SMS, the operations team receives alerts when the CPU utilization alarm triggers. Option B is correct because a CloudWatch alarm can be created to monitor the EC2 instance's CPU utilization metric directly; no metric filter is needed. Option C is not required: CPU utilization is a pre-existing EC2 metric, not a log-based metric, so a metric filter is unnecessary. Option D is wrong because SAP application logs are not needed for CPU utilization monitoring. Option E is wrong because SAP Host Agent is not required for basic CloudWatch monitoring; CloudWatch and SNS provide a simpler native solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure an Amazon SNS topic to send email or SMS notifications when the alarm state is reached.
Why this is correct
Correct. Amazon SNS is used to send notifications from CloudWatch alarms. Configuring an SNS topic for email or SMS alerts the operations team when the CPU utilization alarm triggers.
- ✓
Create a CloudWatch alarm that triggers when CPU utilization exceeds 90% for 5 consecutive minutes.
Why this is correct
Correct. A CloudWatch alarm can be created directly on the EC2 instance's CPU utilization metric, which is a standard metric available without any additional configuration.
- ✗
Create a CloudWatch metric filter on the HANA host's CPU utilization.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. A CloudWatch metric filter is not required for CPU utilization monitoring because the CPU utilization metric is already provided by the EC2 instance. Metric filters are used to extract metrics from custom log entries, not for standard metrics.
- ✗
Enable CloudWatch Logs for the SAP application logs to detect performance issues.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Enabling CloudWatch Logs for SAP application logs helps with log analysis but is not needed specifically for CPU utilization alerting.
- ✗
Install the SAP Host Agent on the HANA instance and configure it to send metrics to SAP Solution Manager.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Installing the SAP Host Agent to send metrics to SAP Solution Manager is an SAP-specific approach and is not necessary for basic CloudWatch-based CPU monitoring and alerting.
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