PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An SAP system on AWS is experiencing high latency for disk I/O. The system uses Amazon EBS gp2 volumes. The operations team notices that the volume queue depth is consistently high. Which change is most likely to reduce latency?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume increasing instance size (Option A) or using RAID 0 (Option C) will fix any performance issue, but the question specifically points to a high queue depth caused by IOPS limits, which is best addressed by migrating to a volume type that allows independent IOPS scaling.
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
✓
Migrate from gp2 to gp3 volumes and increase IOPS.
Gp3 volumes offer a baseline performance that is higher than gp2 for a given size, and they allow you to independently increase IOPS without needing to provision more storage. Since the volume queue depth is consistently high, the bottleneck is likely due to insufficient IOPS, and migrating to gp3 with increased IOPS directly addresses this by providing more I/O capacity, reducing latency.
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 EC2 instance size to get more EBS bandwidth.
Why it's wrong here
Instance size affects bandwidth but does not directly reduce queue depth on the volume.
- ✓
Migrate from gp2 to gp3 volumes and increase IOPS.
Why this is correct
gp3 provides higher baseline IOPS and consistent performance, reducing queue depth and latency.
- ✗
Configure RAID 0 across multiple EBS volumes.
Why it's wrong here
RAID 0 increases throughput but queue depth per volume may remain high.
- ✗
Increase the block size of the file system.
Why it's wrong here
Block size impacts throughput but not latency due to queue depth.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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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.