PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
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.
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
✓
Move to an r5n.24xlarge instance and use multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.
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.
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.
- ✗
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.
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 |
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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.