PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a multi-tier landscape (DEV, QAS, PRD). The PRD system uses a clustered setup with two application servers behind an Application Load Balancer. The database is a single-node HANA on an r5.24xlarge instance. The administrator receives an alert that the PRD application is slow. CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization on the two application servers (average 95%) and high DB connection count. The ALB shows increased request latency. The database CPU is at 60%. The administrator suspects a SQL query performance issue. What should be the first step to identify the root cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse high application server CPU with a scaling issue (option C) or assume high DB connections mean the database is underpowered (option D), rather than recognizing that a SQL performance problem can manifest as app-side symptoms while the DB CPU remains moderate.
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 detailed SQL trace in HANA to identify high-resource queries.
The symptoms (high CPU on app servers, high DB connections, increased ALB latency, DB CPU at 60%) strongly suggest a SQL query performance bottleneck, not a capacity issue. Enabling detailed SQL trace in HANA (option B) is the most direct first step to identify the specific high-resource queries causing the slowdown, as it captures execution plans, wait times, and resource consumption per query. This aligns with SAP's recommended troubleshooting methodology for HANA performance issues.
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 CloudWatch Logs to capture HANA trace logs and analyze them.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs agent is for log collection; first need to enable tracing.
- ✓
Enable detailed SQL trace in HANA to identify high-resource queries.
Why this is correct
SQL trace identifies specific queries causing performance issues.
- ✗
Add two more application servers to distribute the load.
Why it's wrong here
More servers won't fix slow queries; will add more connections.
- ✗
Increase the size of the HANA database instance to reduce CPU pressure.
Why it's wrong here
Database CPU is not maxed; issue is likely query performance.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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