PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An SAP administrator notices that the SAP HANA database is running on an EC2 instance with a single EBS volume for /hana/data and /hana/log. The system is experiencing high latency during write operations. What is the most cost-effective design change to improve performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates choose Provisioned IOPS (io2) or volume size increases, thinking more performance is needed, when the real issue is I/O contention from sharing a single volume between two distinct workload types.
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
✓
Create separate EBS volumes for /hana/data and /hana/log, attaching them to the instance
SAP HANA requires separate EBS volumes for /hana/data and /hana/log to avoid I/O contention. When both directories share a single volume, write operations to the log (sequential) and data (random) compete for the same queue depth and bandwidth, causing high latency. Separating them allows each workload to use dedicated IOPS and throughput, which is the most cost-effective fix without upgrading to premium volume types.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create separate EBS volumes for /hana/data and /hana/log, attaching them to the instance
Why this is correct
Separating data and log volumes eliminates contention and improves write latency cost-effectively.
- ✗
Use an Instance Store volume for /hana/data
Why it's wrong here
Instance Store is ephemeral and not persistent, risky for database data.
- ✗
Modify the EBS volume to use Provisioned IOPS (io2) with higher IOPS
Why it's wrong here
This adds cost and still has contention on a single volume.
- ✗
Increase the size of the existing EBS volume to gain more throughput
Why it's wrong here
Larger volumes provide more baseline IOPS but do not eliminate contention between data and log writes.
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