PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
An SAP system is running on EC2 and uses a Classic Load Balancer to distribute traffic to web dispatchers. The operations team notices that the load balancer is not distributing traffic evenly. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume uneven traffic distribution is always due to misconfigured health checks or cross-zone settings, but the real issue is the flow hash algorithm's behavior with long-lived connections, which is a specific characteristic of Classic Load Balancers.
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
✓
The load balancer uses a flow hash algorithm that may not evenly distribute requests with many long-lived connections.
Classic Load Balancers use a flow hash algorithm based on the source IP, destination IP, source port, destination port, and protocol to route requests. This algorithm can cause uneven distribution when many long-lived connections (such as SAP GUI or HTTP persistent connections) are present, because the same flow hash consistently maps to the same backend instance, leading to imbalance. This is the most likely cause given the scenario of an SAP system with web dispatchers.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cross-zone load balancing is disabled.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling cross-zone can cause uneven distribution across zones, but not the primary cause.
- ✗
Connection draining is not enabled.
Why it's wrong here
Connection draining affects in-flight requests during deregistration.
- ✓
The load balancer uses a flow hash algorithm that may not evenly distribute requests with many long-lived connections.
Why this is correct
Classic Load Balancer's flow hash can lead to uneven distribution for persistent connections.
- ✗
The health check interval is set too high.
Why it's wrong here
Health checks only affect routing to healthy instances.
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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.