PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
Your company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS. The system has a three-tier architecture with a web dispatcher, application servers, and a HANA database. The operations team has been receiving alerts about high CPU usage on the application servers during peak hours. The application servers are currently running on m5.large instances. You need to ensure consistent performance without over-provisioning. What is the most cost-effective solution?
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
✓
Configure Auto Scaling with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization
Configuring Auto Scaling with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization automatically adds or removes application servers in response to demand. This ensures consistent performance during peak hours without permanently over-provisioning resources, making it the most cost-effective solution. Option D is correct.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add more application servers manually during peak hours
Why it's wrong here
Manual scaling is not cost-effective and requires constant monitoring.
- ✗
Upgrade all application servers to m5.xlarge instances
Why it's wrong here
This over-provisions for off-peak hours, increasing cost.
- ✗
Use reserved instances to lower cost but keep existing instances
Why it's wrong here
Reserved instances reduce cost but do not address performance during peaks.
- ✓
Configure Auto Scaling with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization
Why this is correct
Auto Scaling adjusts capacity dynamically based on demand, cost-effective.
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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.