How to Monitor SAP System Performance and Send Alerts Using CloudWatch and SNS
Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor SAP system performance and send alerts? (Choose two.)
Quick Answer
Monitoring SAP system performance and sending alerts on AWS relies on the same two-service pairing that handles most metric-based alerting on the platform: a metrics and alarming service, and a notification service to actually deliver the alert. Amazon CloudWatch is the metrics and alarming layer - it can collect performance metrics from an SAP system, whether through native EC2 and OS metrics, a monitoring agent, or SAP-specific integrations, and evaluate them against defined thresholds through CloudWatch Alarms, which is what determines when a performance condition warrants an alert in the first place. Amazon SNS is the delivery layer: once a CloudWatch Alarm changes state, it can trigger an SNS notification that fans the alert out to email, SMS, or other subscribed endpoints, which is how the alert actually reaches the people who need to respond to it. Together, these two services form the standard monitoring-and-alerting pipeline used across AWS for virtually any workload, not just SAP - CloudWatch answers whether something is wrong, and SNS answers who needs to know and how they find out. Recognizing this pairing is useful well beyond this specific question: whenever a scenario asks how to monitor a system's performance and be alerted about problems, expect CloudWatch, for metrics and alarm evaluation, and SNS, for notification delivery, to be the two services named together, since that combination is AWS's standard building block for this exact kind of requirement.
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse AWS Config or Trusted Advisor as monitoring services, but they are configuration auditing and advisory tools, not real-time performance monitoring and alerting services like CloudWatch and SNS.
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
✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Amazon CloudWatch is the primary AWS monitoring service that can collect metrics from SAP systems (e.g., via SAP Cloud Connector or custom scripts) and trigger alarms based on thresholds. Amazon SNS is the notification service that CloudWatch alarms use to send alerts via email, SMS, or HTTP endpoints. Together, they form the standard monitoring and alerting pipeline for SAP workloads on AWS.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Why this is correct
SNS can send notifications from CloudWatch alarms.
- ✗
Amazon Inspector
Why it's wrong here
Inspector is for security assessments.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Why this is correct
CloudWatch monitors metrics and can trigger alarms.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config is for resource compliance.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor provides recommendations, not monitoring.
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Variation 1. An SAP system on AWS needs to send alerts when the CPU utilization of the application server exceeds 90% for more than 5 minutes. Which AWS service should be used to set up this monitoring?
easy- A.AWS Config
- B.Amazon Inspector
- C.AWS CloudTrail
- ✓ D.Amazon CloudWatch
Why D: Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it can monitor CPU utilization metrics for EC2 instances and trigger alarms based on thresholds. You can configure a CloudWatch alarm to evaluate the CPUUtilization metric over a 5-minute period and send notifications via Amazon SNS when the 90% threshold is breached.
JA
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.