PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
This PAS-C01 practice question tests your understanding of design of sap workloads on aws. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A retail company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS. The system includes an SAP HANA database on an r5.8xlarge instance with 4TB of storage using a single EBS io1 volume with 16000 provisioned IOPS. The application experiences periodic slowdowns during end-of-month financial closing, which typically lasts for 2 hours. The CloudWatch metrics show that during the slowdown, the EBS volume's Average Queue Length peaks at 20, and the instance's EBS Bandwidth is at 3500 Mbps (the maximum for r5.8xlarge is 4750 Mbps). The database team confirms that HANA is not CPU-bound during these periods. The SAP team wants a cost-effective solution to eliminate the performance bottleneck. Which solution should be recommended?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Move to an r5n.24xlarge instance and use multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.
Option B is correct because the bottleneck is EBS bandwidth, not IOPS. The r5.8xlarge instance has a maximum EBS bandwidth of 4750 Mbps, and during the slowdown the volume is already using 3500 Mbps, leaving limited headroom. By moving to an r5n.24xlarge instance, which offers significantly higher EBS bandwidth (up to 19,000 Mbps), and using multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe, you can distribute the I/O load and increase both throughput and IOPS, eliminating the queue length issue cost-effectively without over-provisioning a single volume.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 an Amazon FSx for Lustre file system as the HANA data volume for higher throughput.
Why it's wrong here
FSx for Lustre is not supported for SAP HANA data volumes.
✓
Move to an r5n.24xlarge instance and use multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.
Why this is correct
Larger instance provides more EBS bandwidth; RAID 0 improves aggregate IOPS and throughput.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Increase the provisioned IOPS on the io1 volume to 32000 IOPS to reduce queue length.
Why it's wrong here
This does not increase throughput beyond the instance limit.
✗
Switch to a gp3 volume with 16000 IOPS and 1000 MB/s throughput to reduce cost.
Why it's wrong here
gp3 throughput may be insufficient and still limited by instance bandwidth.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often focus on increasing IOPS (option C) when the real bottleneck is EBS bandwidth, which is an instance-level limit, not a volume-level limit.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The r5.8xlarge instance has a dedicated EBS bandwidth of 4750 Mbps, which is a hard limit shared across all attached EBS volumes. When the queue length peaks at 20, it indicates that the I/O requests are waiting for the EBS bandwidth to become available, not for the volume's IOPS. Using a RAID 0 stripe across multiple io1 volumes on a larger instance like r5n.24xlarge (which has 19,000 Mbps EBS bandwidth) allows the workload to utilize multiple network paths and volume-level throughput, effectively scaling performance linearly. This is a common pattern for SAP HANA on AWS, where the database's sequential write patterns during financial closing benefit from higher throughput rather than raw IOPS.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Design of SAP Workloads on AWS — This question tests Design of SAP Workloads on AWS — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Move to an r5n.24xlarge instance and use multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput. — Option B is correct because the bottleneck is EBS bandwidth, not IOPS. The r5.8xlarge instance has a maximum EBS bandwidth of 4750 Mbps, and during the slowdown the volume is already using 3500 Mbps, leaving limited headroom. By moving to an r5n.24xlarge instance, which offers significantly higher EBS bandwidth (up to 19,000 Mbps), and using multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe, you can distribute the I/O load and increase both throughput and IOPS, eliminating the queue length issue cost-effectively without over-provisioning a single volume.
What should I do if I get this PAS-C01 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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