PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
An SAP system is experiencing high CPU utilization on the application server. The administrator wants to automatically scale the EC2 instance based on CPU usage. Which AWS service should be used?
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
✓
AWS Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling with scaling policies based on CloudWatch alarms can automatically adjust the number of instances. Option B is correct. Option A is wrong because Elastic Load Balancing distributes traffic, not scaling. Option C is wrong because Lambda can be used but is not the primary service for EC2 scaling. Option D is wrong because CloudWatch monitors but does not scale.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Elastic Load Balancing
Why it's wrong here
ELB distributes traffic, it does not scale instances.
- ✓
AWS Auto Scaling
Why this is correct
Auto Scaling can add or remove EC2 instances based on CPU utilization.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda can be used, but Auto Scaling is the standard service.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch monitors and alarms but does not scale.
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
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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.