PAS-C01 Practice Test 23 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is planning to run SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to use Auto Scaling for the application server tier. Which consideration is critical when implementing Auto Scaling for SAP application servers?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Automatically register new instances with the SAP Central Services instance.. SAP application servers must be registered with the SAP Central Services instance (ASCS/SCS) to be recognized as part of the SAP system. Auto Scaling can launch new instances, but without automatic registration via sapstartsrv or the SAP Host Agent, the new instances will not be able to communicate with the Central Services instance, and the SAP system will not utilize them for workload.

Answer

Ensure the database can scale automatically with the application tier.

Answer

Enable termination protection on all Auto Scaling instances.

Answer

Use encrypted EBS volumes for all instances.

Question 2

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance issues. The operations team wants to set up monitoring to identify bottlenecks. Which AWS service should they use to collect and analyze SAP performance metrics?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is correct because CloudWatch can collect custom metrics from SAP and EC2 instances, enabling performance monitoring. The other options are incorrect: AWS Config tracks resource compliance, AWS X-Ray traces microservices, AWS CloudTrail logs API calls for auditing, and AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations but not granular performance metrics.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 3

A company is migrating its SAP NetWeaver system to AWS and wants to implement a high-availability architecture for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) and Enqueue Replication Server (ERS). Which TWO of the following are required components in a recommended AWS HA setup for ASCS and ERS?

Accepted Answer

A shared file system (e.g., Amazon EFS) to store the SAP transport directory and global profile.. In an SAP NetWeaver high-availability architecture on AWS, a shared file system such as Amazon EFS is required to store the SAP transport directory and global profile. This ensures that both the ASCS and ERS instances can access consistent configuration and transport files, which is essential for failover and cluster operations. Without a shared file system, the instances would have divergent configurations, breaking the HA setup.

Answer

An Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic between ASCS and ERS instances.

Answer

A read replica of the SAP HANA database to offload application traffic.

Answer

A secondary Windows Server Failover Cluster in a different Availability Zone.

Question 4

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing slow performance. The SAP team suspects that the Amazon EBS volumes used for the database are not providing sufficient IOPS. Which step should be taken to identify the bottleneck?

Accepted Answer

Monitor the EBS volume metrics in CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch provides detailed metrics for EBS volumes, including `VolumeReadOps`, `VolumeWriteOps`, `VolumeQueueLength`, and `VolumeThroughputPercentage`. By monitoring these metrics, you can directly determine whether the EBS volume is reaching its provisioned IOPS limit or experiencing queue buildup, which would confirm an IOPS bottleneck. This is the most direct and actionable step to diagnose insufficient IOPS for the SAP database.

Answer

Use AWS Trusted Advisor to check performance

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs to analyze network traffic

Answer

Review the AWS Config rules for EBS

Question 5

An organization is migrating a large data lake (500 TB) from on-premises HDFS to Amazon S3. The migration must be completed within 3 weeks. The network bandwidth between on-premises and AWS is 1 Gbps. What is the MOST efficient migration approach?

Accepted Answer

Use multiple AWS Snowball Edge devices to transfer the data in parallel.. Given the 500 TB data volume and a 3-week deadline, the 1 Gbps network bandwidth yields a theoretical maximum transfer of only ~340 TB in 3 weeks (1 Gbps * 21 days * 86400 seconds / 8 bits per byte), which is insufficient. AWS Snowball Edge devices provide a petabyte-scale, offline data transfer solution that bypasses network constraints entirely, allowing parallel transfers to meet the timeline. This is the most efficient approach because it avoids network bottlenecks and leverages physical shipping for massive datasets.

Answer

Use AWS DataSync over the existing internet connection.

Answer

Order a dedicated AWS Direct Connect circuit at 10 Gbps and use AWS DataSync.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration to speed up the transfer over the internet.

Question 6

A company is migrating a critical SAP ERP system to AWS. The migration plan includes using SAP HANA as the database. The system is used by thousands of users and requires high availability with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour. Which architecture should they implement on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA system replication with an active standby instance in another Availability Zone. Option A is correct because SAP HANA system replication with an active standby instance in a second Availability Zone provides synchronous in-region replication and rapid failover, meeting the 15-minute RPO and 1-hour RTO for a critical SAP ERP workload. AWS supports this pattern on certified EC2 instances across AZs, with automatic or manual takeover to the standby node. Option B fails because nightly snapshots give an RPO of up to 24 hours and no fast automated failover. Option C is wrong because AWS DMS does not support SAP HANA as a source or target for this HA architecture. Option D is wrong because Amazon RDS does not offer SAP HANA as an engine, so Multi-AZ RDS cannot host it.

Answer

Deploy a single EC2 instance with SAP HANA and take nightly snapshots

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for continuous replication

Answer

Use Amazon RDS for SAP HANA with Multi-AZ deployment

Question 7

A company is designing a multi-tier web application on AWS. The web tier must scale based on CPU utilization, and the application tier must scale based on request count. Both tiers are deployed in a VPC with public and private subnets. Which combination of AWS services should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Application Load Balancer for the web tier and Network Load Balancer for the application tier. The web tier requires an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute HTTP/HTTPS traffic and can scale based on CPU utilization using an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking policy. The application tier needs a Network Load Balancer (NLB) to handle high request counts at the transport layer (TCP/UDP), which is ideal for scaling based on request count per target. This combination allows each tier to use the most appropriate load balancer for its scaling metric and protocol requirements.

Answer

Classic Load Balancer for both tiers

Answer

Network Load Balancer for the web tier and Application Load Balancer for the application tier

Answer

Amazon API Gateway for the web tier and Application Load Balancer for the application tier

Question 8

An SAP administrator runs the above CLI command to find the public IP of an m5.2xlarge instance. The output is null. Which of the following is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The instance does not have a public IP address assigned. The CLI command `aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids <id> --query 'Reservations[0].Instances[0].PublicIpAddress'` returns null because the instance does not have a public IP address assigned. In AWS, a public IP is only assigned to an instance if it is launched in a subnet that auto-assigns public IPv4 addresses, or if an Elastic IP is attached. The command itself is syntactically correct and will output null (or an empty string) when no public IP exists, not an error.

Answer

The security group blocks the public IP

Answer

The CLI command has a syntax error

Answer

The instance type m5.2xlarge does not support public IP addresses

Question 9

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to monitor the health of an SAP HANA database running on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch alarms based on EC2 instance metrics. Option A is correct because Amazon CloudWatch collects EC2 instance metrics such as CPUUtilization, StatusCheckFailed, and EBS burst balance, and CloudWatch alarms can notify or trigger actions when those infrastructure-level metrics breach thresholds, which is a valid way to monitor the health of the underlying EC2 host running SAP HANA. Option D is correct because SAP HANA exposes its own health and service state through SQL, and queries against system views such as M_SERVICES, M_SERVICE_REPLICATION, or M_ALERTS (or commands like hdbsql) let you check whether HANA services are running and alert-free, which is the application-level health check. Option B is not correct because AWS Trusted Advisor provides checks for cost, security, fault tolerance, performance, and service limits, not SAP HANA-specific best practices. Option C is not correct because AWS Config rules evaluate AWS resource configuration compliance, not the internal configuration or health of a HANA database. Option E is not correct because CloudTrail records AWS API activity for auditing, not HANA API calls or database health.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor checks for HANA best practices

Answer

AWS Config rules to check HANA configuration

Answer

AWS CloudTrail logs for HANA API calls

Question 10

A company is deploying SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to use Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP as the shared file system for the SAP transport directory (/usr/sap/trans). The company needs to ensure that the transport directory is highly available and can be accessed from multiple SAP application servers across different Availability Zones. Which configuration should the SAP administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Create an FSx for ONTAP file system with Multi-AZ configuration and mount the NFS share on all SAP servers.. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with Multi-AZ configuration provides a highly available NFS share that can be accessed from SAP application servers across multiple Availability Zones, meeting the requirements for the SAP transport directory. Option A is incorrect because Amazon EFS, while highly available, is not the specified service required by the scenario (FSx for ONTAP is explicitly mentioned). Option B is incorrect because mounting from a single EC2 instance is not highly available and introduces a single point of failure. Option C is incorrect because Amazon S3 is not a POSIX-compliant file system and is not suitable for SAP transport directories.

Answer

Use Amazon EFS with a mount target in each AZ.

Answer

Mount the transport directory from an Amazon EC2 instance running NFS in the same AZ.

Answer

Store the transport directory in Amazon S3 and use an S3 mount point.

Question 11

A company is migrating an SAP system to AWS. They need to ensure that the migration complies with regulatory requirements for data residency. Which of the following is the most important consideration?

Accepted Answer

Select an AWS Region that meets data residency requirements.. Selecting an AWS Region that meets data residency requirements is crucial. AWS Artifact provides compliance reports but does not enforce data residency. Encryption and backup locations are secondary to region selection.

Answer

Use AWS Artifact to get compliance reports.

Answer

Encrypt the data at rest using AWS KMS.

Answer

Store backups in an S3 bucket in a different Region.

Question 12

A company runs SAP BusinessObjects on AWS using multiple EC2 instances. The system uses a shared file system (EFS) for the repository and output files. Recently, users have reported that generating large reports takes much longer than usual. The SAP administrator checks the EFS metrics in CloudWatch and sees that the BurstCreditBalance is consistently near zero. The EFS file system is in General Purpose mode with default throughput settings. The current size of the file system is 500 GB. What should the administrator do to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Switch to Provisioned Throughput mode and set a higher value.. The EFS file system is in Bursting Throughput mode, and the BurstCreditBalance is near zero, indicating that the file system has exhausted its burst credits and is now limited to baseline throughput. Since the file system is 500 GB, its baseline throughput is 50 MB/s (500 GB * 0.1 MB/s per GB). To improve performance, the administrator should switch to Provisioned Throughput mode and set a higher throughput value, which provides dedicated throughput independent of burst credits.

Answer

Migrate the EFS file system to EFS One Zone for better performance.

Answer

Enable Max I/O throughput mode on the EFS file system.

Answer

Increase the size of the EFS file system by adding more data to it.

Question 13

A company is deploying SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to back up the HANA database to Amazon S3. The database is 1 TB and changes frequently. The backup must be completed within 4 hours. What is the most efficient backup method?

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA Backint agent to stream backups directly to Amazon S3.. SAP HANA Backint agent is the native SAP-certified interface for HANA database backups, allowing direct streaming to Amazon S3 without intermediate file exports. It supports parallel backup streams, compression, and encryption, making it the most efficient method for large, frequently changing databases. This approach meets the 4-hour backup window by leveraging HANA's multi-streaming capabilities and S3's high throughput.

Answer

Take EBS snapshots of the HANA data volumes and copy them to S3.

Answer

Export the HANA database to a file and manually upload to S3 using AWS CLI.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to schedule HANA database backups to S3.

Question 14

A company wants to automate the installation of SAP software on AWS using AWS CloudFormation. Which service is most appropriate to execute the SAP installation scripts?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Run Command.. AWS Systems Manager Run Command is the most appropriate service because it can execute scripts (including SAP installation scripts) on EC2 instances without requiring SSH or RDP access, and it integrates with CloudFormation via custom resources or the AWS::SSM::Document resource. This allows you to run complex, long-running installation commands that are typical for SAP software, which Lambda functions cannot handle due to time limits.

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy.

Answer

AWS Lambda functions triggered by CloudFormation.

Answer

AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate.

Question 15

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS. The SAP application requires low-latency access to the database and high network throughput between application and database tiers. Which AWS architecture should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use a placement group with enhanced networking for both application and database instances.. For SAP workloads on AWS, low-latency and high-throughput communication between application and database tiers is achieved by using a cluster placement group with enhanced networking (ENA) on both tiers. A cluster placement group packs instances close together in a single Availability Zone on the same high-bandwidth, low-latency network backbone, which is exactly what SAP's chatty app-to-DB traffic requires.

Answer

Place the SAP application servers in a different AWS Region than the database.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 as the database storage layer.

Answer

Place the SAP application servers in one Availability Zone and the database in another Availability Zone.