PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance issues during peak hours. The operations team notices that the EBS volumes are consistently showing high queue depth. What should they do to improve performance?
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
✓
Provision more IOPS on the EBS volumes.
High EBS queue depth indicates that the volumes are not keeping up with IO demand, and provisioning more IOPS directly addresses this. Option A is incorrect: changing the EC2 instance type may improve available EBS bandwidth (throughput), but it does not provision additional IOPS; queue depth is primarily an IOPS issue. Option C is incorrect: switching to Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) is optimized for sequential throughput, not for high IOPS or low latency, so it would likely worsen queue depth for typical SAP workloads. Option D is incorrect: increasing EBS volume size can increase baseline IOPS for gp2/gp3 volumes, but that increase is indirect and often insufficient; the direct remedy for high queue depth is to provision more IOPS.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the EC2 instance type to a larger one.
Why it's wrong here
Instance type affects network and compute, but not EBS queue depth directly.
- ✓
Provision more IOPS on the EBS volumes.
Why this is correct
Provisioned IOPS can directly reduce queue depth.
- ✗
Change the EBS volume type to Throughput Optimized HDD (st1).
Why it's wrong here
st1 is for throughput workloads, not low-latency IOPS.
- ✗
Increase the size of the EBS volumes.
Why it's wrong here
Larger volumes have higher baseline IOPS, but not always sufficient.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
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