PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An SAP system uses an Amazon RDS for SAP ASE database. The database is experiencing high connection timeouts. The SAP team notices that the RDS instance's maximum connections parameter is set to 500. What should be done to resolve the issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates assume connection timeouts are caused by insufficient compute or storage resources, leading them to choose instance upgrades or storage increases, when the actual root cause is a misconfigured database parameter that directly controls the connection limit.
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
✓
Modify the RDS parameter group to increase max_connections.
The high connection timeouts are caused by the max_connections parameter being set to 500, which is the default for many RDS for SAP ASE instances. Increasing this value in the RDS parameter group allows more concurrent connections to the database, directly resolving the timeout issue without changing the instance size or storage. This is the simplest and most effective fix because the database engine itself is capable of handling more connections if the parameter is adjusted.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Upgrade the RDS instance to a larger size with more vCPUs.
Why it's wrong here
Instance size does not change max_connections parameter.
- ✓
Modify the RDS parameter group to increase max_connections.
Why this is correct
Directly addresses the connection limit.
- ✗
Create a read replica to offload connections.
Why it's wrong here
Read replica does not increase primary connection limit.
- ✗
Increase the allocated storage for the RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
Storage does not affect connection limits.
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