PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An architect is designing a storage solution for an SAP Business Warehouse (BW) system on AWS. The system requires high throughput for data extraction and transformation. The existing on-premises system uses SAN storage with 10,000 IOPS. Which Amazon EBS volume type should the architect choose to meet or exceed this performance at the lowest cost?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume io1 is the only option for guaranteed IOPS due to its 'Provisioned IOPS' branding, overlooking gp3's ability to provision IOPS independently at a lower cost, or they may incorrectly think HDD-based volumes (sc1, st1) can achieve high IOPS values.
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
✓
gp3 with 10,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput
Amazon EBS gp3 volumes can provision up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s throughput independently, making them suitable for SAP BW workloads requiring 10,000 IOPS. gp3 offers a lower cost than io1 because it includes a baseline performance (3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s) and only charges for additional provisioned IOPS and throughput, whereas io1 charges for every provisioned IOPS. This makes gp3 the most cost-effective choice to meet or exceed the required 10,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
sc1 with 10,000 IOPS
Why it's wrong here
sc1 is cold HDD with max IOPS of 250, not suitable for this workload.
- ✗
io1 with 10,000 Provisioned IOPS
Why it's wrong here
io1 is more expensive per IOPS than gp3 and requires paying for provisioned IOPS.
- ✓
gp3 with 10,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput
Why this is correct
gp3 can achieve 10,000 IOPS at lower cost than io1, and throughput is adequate.
- ✗
st1 with 10,000 IOPS
Why it's wrong here
st1 is a throughput-optimized HDD and cannot sustain 10,000 IOPS; its max IOPS is 500.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,616 original PAS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.