PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
This PAS-C01 practice question tests your understanding of operations and maintenance. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. 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.
An operations team needs to monitor the disk space usage of SAP application servers running on EC2. Which combination of AWS services should they use?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon CloudWatch agent and Amazon CloudWatch alarms
Amazon CloudWatch agent is required to collect custom metrics like disk space usage from EC2 instances, as the standard CloudWatch metrics only cover CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O. By installing the agent and configuring it to report disk space metrics, you can then set CloudWatch alarms to trigger notifications when thresholds are breached, enabling proactive monitoring of SAP application servers.
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.
✗
Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch without agent does not provide disk metrics; CloudTrail is for API auditing.
✓
Amazon CloudWatch agent and Amazon CloudWatch alarms
Why this is correct
CloudWatch agent collects disk metrics, and alarms can notify when thresholds are exceeded.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
Lambda alone cannot collect metrics; DynamoDB is not needed.
✗
Amazon S3 and Amazon SNS
Why it's wrong here
S3 is for storage; SNS is for notifications but lacks metric collection.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates assume standard EC2 CloudWatch metrics include disk space usage, but they only include disk read/write operations (I/O), not percentage of disk space used, so the CloudWatch agent is mandatory for this specific monitoring requirement.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The CloudWatch agent uses the proc filesystem on Linux (e.g., /proc/diskstats) or WMI on Windows to gather disk utilization, and it can be configured via a JSON file to specify which metrics to collect and at what interval. In real-world SAP environments, disk space monitoring is critical because SAP application servers often store temporary data (e.g., work processes, spool files) that can rapidly fill partitions, causing system hangs; the agent can also send logs to CloudWatch Logs for deeper analysis.
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 media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
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.
Operations and Maintenance — This question tests Operations and Maintenance — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Amazon CloudWatch agent and Amazon CloudWatch alarms — Amazon CloudWatch agent is required to collect custom metrics like disk space usage from EC2 instances, as the standard CloudWatch metrics only cover CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O. By installing the agent and configuring it to report disk space metrics, you can then set CloudWatch alarms to trigger notifications when thresholds are breached, enabling proactive monitoring of SAP application servers.
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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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.
Question Discussion
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