PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
An SAP system on AWS is experiencing increased latency in database queries. The operations team suspects that the RDS for Oracle instance is hitting its maximum connections limit. Which CloudWatch metric should be monitored to confirm this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse performance metrics like IOPS or CPU with connection limits, assuming high latency must be caused by resource contention rather than a hard connection cap, which is a distinct and common RDS scaling 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
✓
DatabaseConnections
The DatabaseConnections metric in Amazon CloudWatch tracks the number of database sessions currently connected to the RDS for Oracle instance. When this metric approaches or reaches the value of the `max_connections` parameter (or the Oracle-specific `sessions` and `processes` limits), new connections are rejected, causing application-side latency as queries queue or fail. Monitoring this metric directly confirms whether the maximum connections limit is being hit.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
CPUCreditBalance
Why it's wrong here
CPUCreditBalance indicates CPU credit usage for burstable instances, not connection limits.
- ✓
DatabaseConnections
Why this is correct
DatabaseConnections shows the number of connections; if it reaches the limit, new queries are queued.
- ✗
SwapUsage
Why it's wrong here
SwapUsage indicates memory pressure, not connection limits.
- ✗
ReadIOPS
Why it's wrong here
ReadIOPS measures I/O operations, not connections.
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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.