PAS-C01 Practice Exam 4 — 20 Questions

Question 1

An SAP system administrator needs to apply an operating system patch to an Amazon EC2 instance running SAP NetWeaver. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group. What is the BEST approach to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Use a rolling update by updating the launch configuration and performing an instance refresh.. Option C is correct because an instance refresh in an Auto Scaling group allows you to apply a new launch configuration (which includes the patched AMI or user data) to all instances in a rolling, controlled manner. This minimizes downtime by replacing instances one at a time or in batches, ensuring the SAP NetWeaver application remains available throughout the process. Detaching, stopping, or terminating individual instances would cause unnecessary disruption or require manual reattachment, which is not optimal for high-availability SAP landscapes.

Answer

Detach the instance from the Auto Scaling group, apply the patch, and reattach.

Answer

Stop the instance, apply the patch, and start it.

Answer

Terminate the instance and let Auto Scaling launch a new one with the patch.

Question 2

An SAP administrator notices that the /hana/data filesystem on an SAP HANA database is approaching 95% utilization. The HANA instance uses EBS gp3 volumes. What is the MOST efficient way to increase storage without downtime?

Accepted Answer

Modify the existing EBS volume to increase its size.. Option C is correct because EBS gp3 volumes support online resizing without downtime. You can increase the volume size while the instance is running, and then extend the filesystem and logical volume (if using LVM) to utilize the additional space. This avoids any disruption to the SAP HANA database.

Answer

Add a new EBS volume and extend the logical volume.

Answer

Migrate the database to a new instance with larger volumes.

Answer

Create a snapshot, create a larger volume, and restore.

Question 3

A company wants to ensure that its SAP systems on AWS are compliant with internal security policies. Which AWS service can be used to continuously monitor and evaluate resource configurations?

Accepted Answer

AWS Config. AWS Config is the correct service because it continuously monitors and evaluates the configurations of AWS resources against desired policies, such as internal security policies for SAP systems. It provides detailed configuration snapshots, compliance history, and automated remediation via AWS Config Rules, which can be custom or managed, to ensure ongoing compliance.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

Amazon GuardDuty

Question 4

Which TWO actions can be taken to improve the resilience of an SAP HANA database running on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use EBS snapshots for automated backup.. Option B is correct because EBS snapshots provide a reliable, automated backup mechanism for SAP HANA data volumes, enabling point-in-time recovery and disaster recovery without requiring additional SAP HANA-specific replication. These snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 and can be used to restore the database to a consistent state, improving resilience against data corruption or accidental deletion.

Answer

Deploy the application in a single Availability Zone.

Answer

Increase the CPU capacity of the database server.

Answer

Enable cross-region replication of the database.

Question 5

A company is designing an SAP S/4HANA deployment on AWS. They want to ensure high availability for the central services (ASCS and ERS) across two Availability Zones. Which TWO of the following are required components for a typical SAP high availability setup on AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Network Load Balancer to route traffic to the ASCS and ERS instances.. The AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) is required to distribute traffic to the ASCS and ERS instances across two Availability Zones. It uses health checks to detect failures and reroute traffic to the healthy instance, ensuring that the SAP central services remain available even if one AZ fails. The NLB operates at Layer 4, preserving the source IP and supporting the necessary SAP protocols like the Message Server and Enqueue Replication.

Answer

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment for the SAP HANA database.

Answer

AWS Transit Gateway to connect the two Availability Zones.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator to provide static anycast IP addresses.

Question 6

A company is migrating a legacy three-tier web application to AWS. The application uses a MySQL database and stores session data in the database. The company wants to minimize database load and improve scalability. Which TWO actions should the company take to achieve these goals?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon ElastiCache to store session data instead of the database.. Option C is correct because storing session data in the database creates unnecessary write load and latency. Amazon ElastiCache (Memcached or Redis) provides an in-memory key-value store that is ideal for transient session data, reducing database load and improving application scalability by offloading session management from the persistent MySQL layer.

Answer

Configure Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for high availability.

Answer

Use Auto Scaling for the web server tier to handle variable traffic.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS read replicas to offload read traffic from the primary database.

Question 7

A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where a cross-account IAM role (arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/CrossAccountRole) is unable to upload objects to an S3 bucket (my-bucket) owned by another account. The bucket policy is shown above. What is the MOST likely reason for the failure?

Accepted Answer

The IAM role does not specify the x-amz-acl header with value bucket-owner-full-control in its PutObject request.. The bucket policy grants s3:PutObject to the IAM role, but when objects are uploaded cross-account, the object ACL defaults to the uploading account's full control. Without the `x-amz-acl: bucket-owner-full-control` header, the bucket owner (target account) does not own the object and may not be able to manage or delete it. The IAM role must explicitly set this header in the PutObject request to transfer object ownership to the bucket owner, otherwise the upload fails with an AccessDenied error.

Answer

The S3 bucket has versioning enabled, which requires additional permissions.

Answer

The resource ARN in the bucket policy is incorrect; it should be arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*.

Answer

The bucket policy does not grant the s3:PutObject permission to the IAM role.

Question 8

A systems administrator is troubleshooting an SAP HANA database that runs on an EC2 instance. The exhibit shows the block device mappings of the EC2 instance. The administrator needs to ensure that the data volumes (/dev/sdf and /dev/sdg) are not accidentally terminated when the instance is terminated. However, the administrator also wants to take a nightly snapshot of these volumes using AWS Backup. Which of the following is a potential issue with the current configuration?

Accepted Answer

The volumes are not tagged, so AWS Backup may not automatically include them in backup plans.. Option D is correct because AWS Backup uses resource tags to identify which resources to include in backup plans. If the volumes /dev/sdf and /dev/sdg are not tagged with the appropriate key-value pairs that match the backup plan's tag-based selection criteria, AWS Backup will not automatically discover and include them in nightly snapshots. This can lead to missing backups for critical SAP HANA data volumes.

Answer

The volume /dev/sdf has DeleteOnTermination set to false, which will cause data persistence issues.

Answer

The device names /dev/sdf and /dev/sdg are reserved for NVMe instance storage and should not be used for EBS.

Answer

The volumes are attached to a running instance, which prevents snapshot creation.

Question 9

An IAM policy is attached to a user. The user attempts to upload a file to s3://my-bucket/restricted/data.txt. What is the outcome?

Accepted Answer

The upload fails because the explicit Deny overrides the Allow.. C is correct because IAM policy evaluation follows a default-deny model where an explicit Deny always overrides any Allow. Even though the user has an Allow for s3:GetObject on all resources, the explicit Deny for the specific object path s3://my-bucket/restricted/* takes precedence, causing the upload (which requires s3:PutObject) to fail.

Answer

The upload succeeds because there is no explicit Deny for the specific object.

Answer

The upload succeeds because the Allow statement for s3:GetObject implies PutObject.

Answer

The upload succeeds because the Allow for s3:GetObject is on all resources.

Question 10

A company is running an SAP HANA database on AWS using an i3.16xlarge instance. The database storage is configured with multiple EBS gp2 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to meet IOPS requirements. During a workload spike, the application experiences increased latency and the database performance degrades. The CloudWatch metrics show high Average Queue Length (avg_queue_len) on the EBS volumes but not 100% utilization of the CPU. Which design change is MOST likely to resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Replace gp2 volumes with io2 Block Express volumes to provide consistent IOPS performance.. The high Average Queue Length indicates that the EBS volumes are saturating their IOPS capacity, causing requests to queue up. gp2 volumes have a burst-bucket model that can exhaust credits under sustained high I/O, leading to throttled performance. io2 Block Express volumes provide consistent, provisioned IOPS without burst limitations, directly resolving the queuing issue without requiring instance or stripe changes.

Answer

Move the database to an i3en.24xlarge instance to increase network and EBS bandwidth.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the existing instance to improve throughput.

Answer

Add two additional gp2 volumes to the RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.

Question 11

A company runs SAP Business Suite on an SAP HANA database on AWS. The database uses EBS gp2 volumes. The operations team notices high latency during peak hours. The metrics show that the volume queue depth is consistently above the recommended threshold. What is the MOST cost-effective change to reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Increase the size of the existing EBS gp2 volume to a larger size.. Increasing the size of an existing gp2 volume is the most cost-effective solution because gp2 volumes have a baseline performance of 3 IOPS per GB, and they can burst up to 3,000 IOPS for volumes up to 1,000 GB. By increasing the volume size, you raise the baseline IOPS, which reduces the queue depth without incurring the higher per-GB cost of io1 or io2 volumes. This directly addresses the high latency caused by queue depth exceeding the recommended threshold during peak hours.

Answer

Migrate from gp2 to io2 EBS volumes with the same size.

Answer

Modify the volume to use Provisioned IOPS (io1) with a higher IOPS value.

Answer

Add an additional EBS volume and stripe the volumes using LVM.

Question 12

A company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS. The database is SAP HANA on an EC2 instance. The system is critical and requires a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 2 hours. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup with the SAP HANA Backup and Restore feature (Backint integration) to perform continuous backups to S3.. AWS Backup with the SAP HANA Backup and Restore feature (Backint integration) provides continuous, incremental backups to Amazon S3, achieving an RPO of less than 5 minutes with automated, policy-driven backups. This solution minimizes operational overhead by eliminating manual scripting and infrastructure management, while supporting point-in-time recovery within the required RTO of under 2 hours.

Answer

Use EBS snapshots of the root and data volumes taken every 5 minutes.

Answer

Set up HANA system replication across two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones with manual failover.

Answer

Schedule manual HANA backups to S3 using cron scripts and hdbsql commands.

Question 13

A company is designing a new SAP environment on AWS. The SAP application servers communicate with the database over the network. The architect wants to minimize latency and maximize throughput. Which placement strategy should the architect use?

Accepted Answer

Place all servers in a single Availability Zone and use a cluster placement group.. A cluster placement group is the correct choice because it provides the lowest possible latency and highest throughput by ensuring that all SAP application and database servers are placed in close physical proximity within a single Availability Zone. This placement minimizes network hops and leverages non-blocking, high-bandwidth networking, which is critical for SAP's latency-sensitive communication between application and database layers.

Answer

Place the application servers in one Availability Zone and the database in a different Availability Zone.

Answer

Place the application servers in one VPC and the database in a different VPC connected via VPC peering.

Answer

Place the application servers in one AWS Region and the database in another Region.

Question 14

A company has an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance with 1.9 TB of memory. The database requires persistent storage. The solutions architect must choose a storage configuration that provides the highest IOPS and throughput while maintaining data durability. Which storage option should the architect choose?

Accepted Answer

Use multiple io2 EBS volumes with Block Express striped together using LVM.. Option A is correct because it combines multiple io2 Block Express EBS volumes striped via LVM, which delivers the highest possible IOPS and throughput for SAP HANA on AWS. io2 Block Express volumes support up to 256,000 IOPS and 4,000 MB/s throughput per volume, and striping multiple volumes linearly scales these limits to meet the demands of a 1.9 TB memory HANA database. This configuration also ensures data durability through EBS replication within an Availability Zone, unlike instance store volumes.

Answer

Use a single io2 Block Express EBS volume of the required size.

Answer

Use multiple gp3 EBS volumes striped together with LVM.

Answer

Use NVMe instance store volumes for the HANA data and log areas.

Question 15

A company is planning to migrate its SAP S/4HANA system to AWS. The system requires high availability with an RTO of less than 30 minutes and RPO of less than 15 minutes. The SAP application layer runs on Linux. Which architecture should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP application on two EC2 instances in different AZs with a shared EFS file system, and use a multi-AZ RDS for SAP HANA with synchronous replication.. Option D is correct because it meets the RTO of <30 minutes and RPO of <15 minutes by deploying the SAP application on two EC2 instances across different Availability Zones with a shared EFS file system for stateless application files, and using a multi-AZ RDS for SAP HANA with synchronous replication. Synchronous replication ensures zero data loss (RPO=0) and automatic failover to the standby in a different AZ achieves RTO well under 30 minutes. The Linux SAP application layer is stateless, so EFS provides a shared, highly available file system that allows either instance to serve traffic seamlessly after a failover.

Answer

Deploy the SAP application on a single EC2 instance and use S3 for database backups with cross-region replication.

Answer

Deploy a single EC2 instance for the SAP application and database in one Availability Zone, and take hourly snapshots of the EBS volumes.

Answer

Use two EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group with instance store volumes for the database, and store application files on S3.

Question 16

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a large HANA database (10 TB). The database uses EBS gp3 volumes. The system experiences performance degradation due to high disk I/O. The architect decides to migrate to EBS io2 Block Express volumes. Which THREE factors should the architect consider when planning the migration?

Accepted Answer

The maximum IOPS per volume supported by io2 Block Express is 256,000.. Option A is correct because io2 Block Express volumes support a maximum IOPS of 256,000 per volume, which is significantly higher than the 16,000 IOPS limit of gp3. This high IOPS capability is critical for large SAP HANA databases (10 TB) that experience performance degradation due to high disk I/O, as it allows the database to handle bursty workloads without throttling.

Answer

SAP HANA supports RAID 0 across multiple io2 volumes without additional software.

Answer

io2 Block Express volumes can be attached to multiple EC2 instances simultaneously using EBS Multi-Attach.

Question 17

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The database is SAP HANA with a size of 3 TB. The company wants to minimize downtime during the migration. Which migration strategy should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use HANA System Replication to replicate the database to an EC2 instance running HANA in the target AWS environment, then perform a takeover.. HANA System Replication (HSR) is the optimal strategy for minimizing downtime because it continuously replicates data from the on-premises HANA database to an EC2 instance running HANA in AWS. When the migration window opens, a simple takeover (failover) occurs, typically completing in minutes, which meets the requirement for minimal downtime. This approach avoids the lengthy export/import or backup/restore processes that would take hours for a 3 TB database.

Answer

Export the HANA database to flat files using SAP HANA Studio, upload the files to Amazon S3, and import them into an EC2 HANA instance.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication to migrate the database to Amazon RDS for SAP HANA.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take a full backup of the on-premises HANA database and restore it to an EC2 instance in AWS.

Question 18

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS. They are experiencing high read latency on their EBS volumes used for /usr/sap. Which of the following is the MOST effective way to improve read performance?

Accepted Answer

Use io2 Block Express volumes with provisioned IOPS.. The io2 Block Express volume type provides the highest durability and consistent low-latency performance for SAP workloads, with up to 256,000 provisioned IOPS per volume. For /usr/sap, which is sensitive to read latency due to frequent binary and configuration file access, io2 Block Express ensures predictable sub-millisecond latency even under high I/O demand, directly addressing the high read latency issue.

Answer

Change the volume type to gp3 with higher throughput.

Answer

Move to a larger instance type with more network bandwidth.

Answer

Configure RAID 0 across multiple volumes.

Question 19

A company is designing an SAP HANA database on AWS. The database requires high throughput and low latency for data volumes. Which TWO AWS features should be used to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instance.. Option D is correct because enabling EBS optimization on an EC2 instance dedicates network bandwidth to EBS I/O, eliminating contention between network and storage traffic, which is critical for SAP HANA's high-throughput, low-latency requirements. Option E is correct because EBS io2 Block Express volumes provide up to 256,000 IOPS per volume with sub-millisecond latency, meeting the demanding performance needs of SAP HANA data volumes.

Answer

Use EBS gp3 volumes for the HANA data volume.

Answer

Use EC2 instance store volumes for the HANA data volume.

Answer

Store HANA data on Amazon S3 with S3 Express One Zone.

Question 20

An SAP workload on AWS uses an Auto Scaling group for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) and Enqueue Replication Server (ERS) instances. The instances are launched with a custom AMI that includes the SAP software. During a recent failover test, the ASCS instance failed to start after being terminated and re-launched by the Auto Scaling group. The error log indicates that the ASCS instance cannot find the quorum device. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Accepted Answer

The quorum device (EBS volume) was not re-attached or was not available in the same Availability Zone as the new ASCS instance.. In an SAP on AWS high-availability setup, the ASCS and ERS instances rely on a shared quorum device (typically an EBS volume or an Amazon EFS file system) to maintain cluster state and prevent split-brain scenarios. When the Auto Scaling group terminates and re-launches the ASCS instance, the new instance must have the quorum device attached and be in the same Availability Zone as the EBS volume (since EBS volumes are AZ-specific). If the quorum device is not re-attached or is in a different AZ, the SAP cluster cannot find it, causing the ASCS instance to fail to start.

Answer

The instance type of the new ASCS instance is different from the original, causing incompatibility with the SAP kernel.

Answer

The ASCS instance does not have a public IP address, preventing communication with the quorum device.

Answer

The Security Group associated with the ASCS instance does not allow inbound traffic on the quorum port.