PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
An operations team is troubleshooting a performance issue in an SAP environment where the database server's memory usage is consistently high. The team suspects that the SAP buffer cache is not sized optimally. Which CloudWatch metric should be monitored to confirm this?
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
✓
`FreeableMemory` for the RDS instance
The `DatabaseMemoryUsedPercent` metric for Amazon RDS provides the percentage of memory used by the database engine, including buffer cache. A consistently high value may indicate an oversized buffer cache relative to available memory, but the question asks for a metric to confirm. However, the correct metric for RDS memory is `FreeableMemory`. The buffer cache size can be inferred from `FreeableMemory`. Alternatively, for EC2-based SAP, the OS metrics are needed. Given the options, `FreeableMemory` is the best indicator.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
`ReadIOPS` for the RDS instance
Why it's wrong here
Read IOPS can be affected by buffer cache, but does not directly confirm high memory usage.
- ✗
`DatabaseConnections` for the RDS instance
Why it's wrong here
Connection count does not reflect memory usage of buffer cache.
- ✓
`FreeableMemory` for the RDS instance
Why this is correct
Low freeable memory indicates the database is using most of the available memory, which could be due to a large buffer cache.
- ✗
`SwapUsage` for the RDS instance
Why it's wrong here
Swap usage indicates memory pressure, but does not directly measure buffer cache size.
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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.