PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An SAP Basis administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue on an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. The administrator notices that the 'hdbcons' command shows high 'wait time' for 'disk I/O' operations. The instance is an r5.4xlarge with 500 GB of gp2 EBS volumes for /hana/data and /hana/log. Which of the following is the MOST effective action to improve disk I/O performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume upgrading the EC2 instance type (Option C) will resolve I/O bottlenecks, but the PAS-C01 exam tests the understanding that EBS volume performance is independent of instance size (as long as the instance is EBS-optimized), and the correct fix is to change the volume type or provisioned performance.
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
✓
Change the EBS volume type from gp2 to gp3 with higher IOPS and throughput.
Changing the EBS volume type from gp2 to gp3 with higher IOPS and throughput is the most effective action because gp3 offers a baseline performance that can be increased independently of volume size, and it provides higher IOPS and throughput compared to gp2. This directly addresses the high disk I/O wait time. Upgrading the instance type (option C) may not resolve the I/O bottleneck if the volumes are the limiting factor. Increasing snapshot frequency (option A) does not improve I/O performance. Disabling delta merge (option D) is not recommended and does not address disk I/O issues.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the frequency of EBS snapshots to offload I/O.
Why it's wrong here
Snapshots do not offload I/O; they add overhead.
- ✓
Change the EBS volume type from gp2 to gp3 with higher IOPS and throughput.
Why this is correct
gp3 provides better performance and is cost-effective.
- ✗
Upgrade to a larger EC2 instance type with more CPU and memory.
Why it's wrong here
Larger instance type does not directly improve disk I/O.
- ✗
Disable the HANA delta merge operation to reduce I/O load.
Why it's wrong here
Delta merge helps maintain performance; disabling it increases fragmentation.
Visual reference
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This PAS-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,616-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. 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.