PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
An SAP environment uses Amazon CloudWatch to monitor EC2 instances. The operations team wants to receive a notification when the CPU utilization exceeds 90% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse AWS Config (configuration compliance) or CloudTrail (API auditing) with real-time metric monitoring, or they think CloudWatch Logs can directly alert on CPU metrics, but only CloudWatch Alarms with SNS provide the precise threshold-based notification for CloudWatch metrics.
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
✓
Amazon CloudWatch Alarms with Amazon SNS.
Amazon CloudWatch Alarms can monitor a metric (like CPUUtilization) and trigger an action when the metric crosses a defined threshold for a specified number of consecutive evaluation periods. By setting the alarm to evaluate CPU utilization > 90% for 5 consecutive minutes (e.g., 5 periods of 1 minute each) and configuring the alarm action to publish to an Amazon SNS topic, the operations team receives a notification directly. This is the native, serverless way to react to CloudWatch metrics without additional infrastructure.
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 Alarms with Amazon SNS.
Why this is correct
Alarms send notifications via SNS when thresholds are breached.
- ✗
AWS Config.
Why it's wrong here
Config evaluates resource configurations.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Logs.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs is for monitoring log files.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API calls.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.