PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
An SAP Basis administrator notices that the SAP system's response time is increasing during peak hours. The system uses an SAP NetWeaver application server on EC2 and an SAP HANA database on a separate EC2 instance. CloudWatch metrics show that the application server's CPU utilization is at 80% and the database server's CPU is at 30%. The application server is an m5.2xlarge, and the database is an r5.2xlarge. The administrator checks the SAP work process overview and sees that all dialog work processes are busy. What should the administrator do to resolve the performance issue?
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
✓
Increase the number of dialog work processes in the SAP application server profile.
The symptom is that all dialog work processes are busy while CPU utilization on the application server is only 80% and database CPU is only 30%. This indicates that the bottleneck is the number of dialog work processes, not CPU or memory. Increasing the number of dialog work processes in the SAP application server profile allows more concurrent users to be processed without additional hardware. Option A is incorrect because the database CPU is low, so increasing database capacity won't help. Option B is incorrect because the application server CPU is not fully saturated; the issue is work process limits. Option C is incorrect because adding another application server may help, but it is more complex and the immediate fix is to adjust the work process count; however, the question asks for the best first step, and increasing dialog work processes is simpler and directly addresses the symptom.
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 database server's CPU capacity by changing to a larger instance type.
Why it's wrong here
Database CPU is low, not the bottleneck.
- ✗
Increase the instance size of the application server to a compute-optimized type.
Why it's wrong here
CPU is not the issue; work process saturation is.
- ✗
Add another application server to the system and distribute the load.
Why it's wrong here
Adding another application server would distribute the dialog work process load, but the bottleneck is not application-side capacity: the CPU on the application server is at 80%, not saturated, while the database CPU is idle at 30%. The real issue is that all dialog work processes are busy, which typically indicates a database query or lock contention problem, not a lack of application servers. This option is tempting because scaling out application servers is the standard remedy for CPU-bound application tiers, and it would be correct if the application server CPU were pegged near 100% and database CPU were also high, confirming a need for more application processing capacity.
- ✓
Increase the number of dialog work processes in the SAP application server profile.
Why this is correct
Adding more work processes allows handling more concurrent requests.
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