PAS-C01 Practice Exam 3 — 20 Questions

Question 1

An SAP system on AWS is using Amazon EBS volumes for the database. The company wants to take crash-consistent snapshots of the entire database volume set. Which approach is recommended?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup with pre- and post-scripts for volume groups. AWS Backup with pre- and post-scripts for volume groups is the recommended approach because it orchestrates crash-consistent snapshots across multiple EBS volumes by freezing the application (e.g., SAP HANA) and flushing I/O before the snapshot, then unfreezing after. This ensures all volumes are captured at the same point in time without downtime, which is critical for SAP databases requiring consistency across the entire volume set.

Answer

Stop the instance, take snapshots, then restart

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach to attach volumes to a backup instance

Answer

Take snapshots of each volume individually at the same time

Question 2

An SAP HANA system on AWS is experiencing performance degradation. The administrator suspects that the EBS volumes are not providing consistent IOPS. Which AWS tool can be used to monitor the performance of EBS volumes at the volume level?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch provides detailed metrics for EBS volumes, including `VolumeReadOps`, `VolumeWriteOps`, `VolumeQueueLength`, and `VolumeIdleTime`, which allow administrators to monitor IOPS performance at the individual volume level. By setting CloudWatch alarms on these metrics, you can detect when an EBS volume is not delivering the provisioned IOPS, which is critical for SAP HANA workloads that require consistent, high-throughput storage.

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 3

A company is running SAP BusinessObjects on AWS and needs to back up the CMS database (an SAP HANA database) daily. The backup must be stored in Amazon S3 for long-term retention and must be recoverable within 4 hours. Which backup strategy meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure the SAP HANA Backint agent to back up directly to Amazon S3.. Configuring the SAP HANA Backint agent to back up directly to Amazon S3 meets the requirements because it provides native HANA backup integration with S3 for long-term retention and allows recovery within the 4-hour RTO. Backint is the standard SAP HANA API for third-party backup tools, and AWS supports it via the AWS Backint agent.

Answer

Copy the HANA data files to an Amazon EBS volume in a different Availability Zone.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to create application-consistent backups of the HANA database.

Answer

Take daily EBS snapshots of the HANA volumes.

Question 4

An SAP administrator notices that the SAP application server performance degrades during peak hours. The application servers are running on EC2 instances with gp2 EBS volumes. The administrator suspects the EBS volumes are experiencing burst bucket depletion. Which action should the administrator take to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the volume type to gp3 and adjust the IOPS and throughput settings.. The gp2 volume type uses a credit-based burst model where performance degrades once the burst bucket is depleted, especially under sustained high I/O. Changing to gp3 provides a baseline performance that does not rely on burst credits, and you can independently provision higher IOPS and throughput without increasing storage size, directly addressing the performance degradation during peak hours.

Answer

Increase the size of the gp2 volumes to increase the baseline IOPS.

Answer

Move the data to instance store volumes for better performance.

Answer

Change the volume type to io1 and provision high IOPS.

Question 5

A company wants to migrate its SAP BusinessObjects system to AWS. The system includes a CMS database that runs on Microsoft SQL Server. The company wants to use AWS DMS to migrate the database with minimal downtime. Which migration method should they use?

Accepted Answer

Full load with ongoing replication (change data capture). Full load with ongoing replication (change data capture) performs an initial bulk load and then continuously replicates ongoing changes from the source SQL Server to the target, keeping downtime to a minimum during cutover. This is the standard AWS DMS approach for minimal-downtime migrations of active databases. A one-time full load would require a maintenance window and cause extended downtime.

Answer

Snapshot restore to Amazon RDS

Answer

Full load with one-time restore

Answer

Full load only

Question 6

An SAP Basis administrator needs to automate the start and stop of SAP application servers on AWS to reduce costs during non-business hours. The instance must be stopped (not terminated) to preserve the data. Which AWS service can be used to schedule the start and stop?

Accepted Answer

AWS Instance Scheduler. AWS Instance Scheduler is a solution that uses AWS Lambda and Amazon CloudWatch Events (Amazon EventBridge) to automatically start and stop EC2 instances based on a defined schedule. For SAP Basis administrators, this allows stopping (not terminating) SAP application server instances during non-business hours, preserving all data on the attached EBS volumes. The solution supports tagging instances with schedule tags, making it ideal for cost optimization without data loss.

Answer

AWS Auto Scaling

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Alarms

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows

Question 7

The exhibit shows the output of the describe-replication-tasks command for an ongoing migration from SAP HANA to Amazon RDS for MySQL. The task status is 'running' but no data has been transferred after 2 hours. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The source endpoint is not accessible from the replication instance. When a DMS replication task shows 'running' but no data has moved for hours, the most common cause is that the replication instance cannot reach the source endpoint — typically due to security group, NACL, routing, or DNS issues. DMS will keep the task in 'running' state while retrying the connection, so the symptom is a stalled task rather than an immediate failure.

Answer

The replication instance has insufficient memory

Answer

The target endpoint is pointing to the wrong database

Answer

The HANA database is not configured as a target

Question 8

A company has deployed SAP S/4HANA on AWS using a single EC2 instance for the HANA database and multiple EC2 instances for the application servers. The system is in production and the company wants to implement high availability for the HANA database to minimize downtime during patching and failures. The HANA database is critical and must have an RTO of less than 5 minutes and an RPO of zero. The current setup uses a single EBS volume for /hana/data and another for /hana/log. The company has two Availability Zones available. Which solution meets the requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA System Replication with automatic failover to a secondary HANA instance in another AZ.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with automatic failover meets the RTO < 5 minutes and RPO = 0 requirements by synchronously replicating data to a secondary HANA instance in another Availability Zone. Automatic failover ensures the secondary takes over without manual intervention, minimizing downtime during patching or failures. This is the only option that provides synchronous replication with zero data loss and fast failover across AZs.

Answer

Attach the EBS volumes to two EC2 instances using EBS Multi-Attach.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to schedule snapshots every 5 minutes and restore in another AZ if needed.

Answer

Deploy the HANA database on a larger EC2 instance with higher availability SLA.

Question 9

An administrator needs to back up an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. The backup must be stored in a durable, cost-effective storage solution. Which AWS service is best suited for storing the backup files?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is the best choice for storing SAP HANA backup files because it offers 99.999999999% durability, is cost-effective for long-term backup storage, and integrates natively with SAP HANA via the Backint agent for direct backup to S3. S3 provides scalable object storage that can handle the large volume of SAP HANA data without requiring manual provisioning or lifecycle management.

Answer

Amazon S3 Glacier

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots

Question 10

A company is deploying SAP NetWeaver on AWS and needs to ensure high availability for the ASCS instance. They plan to use a shared file system for the transport directory. Which AWS storage service is most appropriate for this shared file system?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS provides a fully managed, scalable, and highly available NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. For SAP NetWeaver ASCS high availability, the transport directory (/usr/sap/trans) must be shared between the active and passive ASCS instances, and EFS supports the required NFSv4 protocol with strong consistency and POSIX permissions, making it the most appropriate choice.

Answer

Amazon EBS volumes with multi-attach

Answer

EC2 Instance Store

Answer

Amazon S3

Question 11

A company is migrating an SAP ERP system to AWS. They have multiple SAP systems (DEV, QAS, PRD) and want to automate the deployment of identical environments. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the correct choice because it lets the company define the entire SAP landscape (DEV, QAS, PRD) as code in templates, so identical, repeatable environments can be provisioned automatically and consistently. It supports infrastructure-as-code with parameters, mappings, and nested stacks, which is ideal for deploying multiple SAP systems with the same architecture. AWS OpsWorks is a configuration-management service (Chef/Puppet) and does not provide the same declarative template-based environment provisioning. AWS Elastic Beanstalk targets application deployment for web apps, not full SAP infrastructure stacks, and AWS CodeDeploy only automates application code deployments to instances, not environment creation.

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy

Question 12

A company is migrating SAP ECC to AWS and needs to ensure low-latency connectivity between the SAP application and database servers. Which AWS service is most appropriate to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Placement groups for the application and database instances.. Placement groups, specifically cluster placement groups, provide low-latency, high-throughput network connectivity by placing instances in a single Availability Zone within a low-latency, 10 Gbps network. This is ideal for SAP ECC where the application and database servers require consistent, sub-millisecond latency for optimal performance.

Answer

VPC peering between the application and database subnets.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect to connect the application and database servers.

Answer

AWS Transit Gateway to connect the application and database subnets.

Question 13

An SAP administrator runs the AWS CLI command shown in the exhibit to check the status of a production HANA instance. The output shows the instance is running in us-east-1a. However, the SAP application team reports that the HANA database is not responding. What should the administrator check next to diagnose the issue?

Accepted Answer

The HANA database service is not running on the instance. The AWS CLI command only checks the EC2 instance state (e.g., 'running'), not the status of the HANA database service itself. Even if the instance is running, the HANA database service (hdbnameserver, hdbindexserver, etc.) may have crashed, failed to start, or been stopped. The administrator should SSH into the instance and run commands like 'systemctl status hdbindexserver' or 'sapcontrol -nr <instance_number> -function GetProcessList' to verify the HANA service status.

Answer

The EBS volumes are detached from the instance

Answer

The instance state is 'running' so no issue with the instance

Answer

The security group does not allow inbound traffic to the database port

Question 14

An SAP system administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an EC2 instance running SAP NetWeaver and set an alarm when it exceeds 90% for 5 minutes. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it provides detailed monitoring of EC2 instances, including CPU utilization metrics, and allows you to set CloudWatch Alarms that trigger when a metric exceeds a specified threshold (e.g., 90%) for a given number of consecutive evaluation periods (e.g., 5 minutes). This is the native AWS service designed for performance monitoring and alerting.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Config

Question 15

A company is migrating its SAP landscape to AWS. The SAP systems consist of multiple instances (development, quality, production) running on different EC2 instances. The company wants to automate the provisioning of these instances using infrastructure as code. Which AWS service should be used to define and provision the SAP infrastructure in a repeatable manner?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the correct service because it allows you to define your entire SAP infrastructure—including EC2 instances, VPCs, security groups, and storage—as code using a JSON or YAML template. This enables repeatable, version-controlled provisioning of development, quality, and production environments, which is essential for an SAP migration requiring consistent and automated deployments.

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS Service Catalog

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Question 16

An SAP system on AWS needs to be highly available across two Availability Zones. The application tier runs on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The database tier uses an RDS Multi-AZ deployment. What additional step is REQUIRED to ensure complete high availability for the application tier?

Accepted Answer

Launch EC2 instances in at least two different Availability Zones.. For the application tier to be highly available across two Availability Zones, EC2 instances must be distributed across at least two AZs so that if one AZ fails, the Application Load Balancer can route traffic to instances in the other AZ. Option B directly addresses this requirement. Without instances in multiple AZs, the application tier remains a single point of failure, even if the ALB and RDS Multi-AZ are configured correctly.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach for the root volumes.

Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling group with a dynamic scaling policy.

Question 17

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs. They notice that inter-VPC traffic is being dropped. What is a likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Missing routes in the VPC route tables pointing to the Transit Gateway.. AWS Transit Gateway requires explicit routes in each VPC's route table pointing to the Transit Gateway attachment ID for traffic to be forwarded between VPCs. Without these routes, the VPCs have no path to reach the Transit Gateway, causing inter-VPC traffic to be dropped at the VPC router level.

Answer

Security groups not allowing return traffic.

Answer

Transit Gateway does not support transitive routing.

Answer

Network ACLs blocking traffic.

Question 18

Refer to the exhibit. A CloudFormation template is used to launch an EC2 instance for SAP. The instance launches but the root volume is only 50 GB. The SAP installation requires at least 100 GB for the root volume. How should the template be modified?

Accepted Answer

Change VolumeSize from 50 to 100 in the BlockDeviceMapping.. The CloudFormation template explicitly defines the root volume size in the BlockDeviceMapping property. By changing VolumeSize from 50 to 100, the template will provision a new EC2 instance with a 100 GB root volume, meeting the SAP installation requirement. The BlockDeviceMapping overrides the default root volume size from the AMI, so this is the precise way to control volume size at launch.

Answer

Change the InstanceType to a larger instance.

Answer

Modify the running instance's root volume size using the AWS Management Console.

Answer

Change the ImageId to an AMI with a larger root volume.

Question 19

An SAP administrator needs to provide temporary, time-limited access to an S3 bucket containing SAP backup files for an external auditor. The auditor should be able to download files from the bucket. Which method provides the most secure way to grant access?

Accepted Answer

Generate a presigned URL for each file the auditor needs to download.. Presigned URLs grant temporary, time-limited access to specific S3 objects without requiring the auditor to have AWS credentials or any permanent permissions. The SAP administrator can generate a presigned URL for each backup file, set an expiration time, and share the URL with the auditor, who can then download the file using standard HTTP GET requests. This approach follows the principle of least privilege and ensures access is revoked automatically after the URL expires.

Answer

Create an IAM user with read-only access to the bucket and share the credentials with the auditor.

Answer

Provide the auditor with the root user credentials of the AWS account.

Answer

Make the bucket publicly readable and share the bucket URL.

Question 20

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to improve the operational resilience of its SAP application servers. The application servers are behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and run on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The operations team needs to ensure that unhealthy application servers are automatically replaced and that the replacement instances are correctly registered with the ALB. Which TWO configurations should be implemented to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group to use the ALB target group's health check as the health check type.. To automatically replace unhealthy SAP application servers and ensure replacements are registered with the ALB, the Auto Scaling group must use the ALB target group's health checks and have the target group attached. These two configurations together provide end-to-end health monitoring and automatic registration, eliminating manual intervention and ensuring high availability.

Answer

Configure a scheduled scaling policy to replace all instances every night, and use the ALB to drain connections before termination.

Answer

Create a lifecycle hook that sends a notification to an Amazon SNS topic when an instance is terminating, and use a Lambda function to deregister the instance from the target group.

Answer

Enable Elastic Load Balancing health checks on the EC2 instances and configure the Auto Scaling group to use EC2 status checks as the health check type.