PAS-C01 Practice Test 33 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP system is deployed on EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. Which AWS service should be used to automatically distribute incoming traffic across the SAP application servers?

Accepted Answer

Application Load Balancer. An Application Load Balancer distributes HTTP/HTTPS traffic across multiple targets in different Availability Zones. Route 53 (Option B) is a DNS service, not a load balancer. Network Load Balancer (Option C) is for TCP/UDP traffic. CloudFront (Option D) is a CDN.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

Network Load Balancer

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Question 2

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS using a multi-node scale-out configuration. During a routine maintenance window, the administrator needs to apply an HANA database software update. What is the BEST practice to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Perform a rolling update by updating one node at a time while keeping the system operational.. HANA scale-out supports rolling updates, allowing nodes to be updated one by one while the system remains operational, minimizing downtime. Option B is less optimal because using HSR failover adds complexity and is typically reserved for planned migration or disaster recovery, not routine updates. Option C would cause full downtime as it requires stopping all services. Option D is inefficient for a minor software update as it involves creating a new cluster and migrating data.

Answer

Use HANA System Replication to fail over to a standby system, then update the primary.

Answer

Stop all HANA services, apply the update to all nodes, then restart.

Answer

Create a new HANA cluster with the updated version and migrate data.

Question 3

A company runs SAP on AWS and wants to automate the monitoring of SAP system health. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. Options C (AWS Lambda) and D (Amazon CloudWatch) are correct. CloudWatch can collect custom metrics from SAP systems, and Lambda can process and act on those metrics to automate monitoring. Option A (AWS Config) is for compliance and configuration tracking, not monitoring. Option B (EC2 Auto Scaling) is for scaling instances, not monitoring. Option E (SQS) is a message queue service, not used for monitoring.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Question 4

Refer to the exhibit. An Application Load Balancer is configured to route traffic to an Auto Scaling group of web servers. The health check for the target group is failing. The web servers are healthy and running, but the health check endpoint is returning a 503 status code because the application cannot connect to the database. The database is an Amazon RDS instance in the same VPC. Which action should the solutions architect take to resolve the health check failure?

Accepted Answer

Change the health check endpoint to a static page that does not require database connectivity.. The health check endpoint should validate the web server's ability to serve traffic, not the database's availability. By changing the health check to a static page (e.g., /health.html) that does not depend on database connectivity, the load balancer will correctly assess the web server's health independently. This decouples the health check from the database, preventing cascading failures where a database outage causes all web servers to be marked unhealthy and removed from the target group.

Answer

Restart the web server instances to reset the database connection.

Answer

Modify the application's health check endpoint to return a 200 OK status even when the database is unavailable.

Answer

Increase the health check interval to allow more time for the database to respond.

Question 5

Which THREE factors should be considered when planning a recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) for an SAP system on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Storage type (EBS vs. instance store). RPO is determined by backup frequency and replication lag; RTO is affected by instance size and storage type; cross-region replication can help but RTO depends on failover time.

Answer

AWS Region and Availability Zone

Answer

Number of SAP users

Question 6

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS. They want to ensure high availability for the central services (ASCS) and enqueue replication. Which TWO components should be deployed to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Primary ASCS instance in one Availability Zone. For HA, deploy the ASCS instance in a primary node and an enqueue replication server (ERS) in a secondary node, typically in different AZs.

Answer

Secondary ASCS instance in a different Availability Zone

Answer

Third ASCS instance in a third Availability Zone

Answer

SAP HANA database replication

Question 7

Refer to the exhibit. An SAP system administrator checks disk usage on an SAP HANA instance. The /hana/log volume is at 80% usage. What is the recommended course of action to prevent issues?

Accepted Answer

Increase the size of the EBS volume for /hana/log and extend the filesystem.. SAP HANA requires that the log volume have sufficient free space to avoid transaction log overflow. The best practice is to increase the size of the log volume. Deleting logs manually is risky, and moving data volumes is not appropriate. The recommended action is to increase the EBS volume size and extend the filesystem.

Answer

Take a snapshot of the instance and terminate it.

Answer

Delete old backup files from /hana/log.

Answer

Move some data from /hana/log to /hana/data.

Question 8

An SAP administrator is setting up an SAP HANA system replication across two AWS Availability Zones (AZs). The primary and secondary instances use EBS volumes for data and log storage. What is the best practice for ensuring data consistency and minimizing data loss during a failover?

Accepted Answer

Enable synchronous replication mode in SAP HANA.. SAP HANA synchronous replication mode ensures that a transaction is committed on both the primary and secondary instances before an acknowledgment is sent to the application. This guarantees zero data loss (RPO=0) during a failover, because the secondary always has an identical copy of the committed data. For cross-AZ deployments, this is the best practice to maintain data consistency while still providing high availability.

Answer

Take frequent EBS snapshots of the primary volume and restore them on the secondary.

Answer

Use asynchronous replication mode for better performance.

Answer

Configure the EBS volumes as Multi-Attach to allow both instances to access the same volume.

Question 9

A company has an SAP system running on AWS that uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to multiple EC2 instances. The operations team notices that the ALB is returning 503 errors intermittently. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The target instances are failing health checks.. 503 errors are typically returned when the target instances fail health checks and become unhealthy. Option A is wrong because if the security group blocked inbound traffic from the targets, it would cause timeout or 502 errors, not 503. Option C is wrong because insufficient ALB capacity can lead to latency or 502 errors, but 503 specifically indicates unhealthy targets. Option D is wrong because an expired SSL certificate would result in 502 errors (bad gateway), not 503.

Answer

The security group attached to the ALB is blocking inbound traffic from the targets.

Answer

The ALB does not have enough capacity to handle the traffic.

Answer

The SSL certificate on the ALB has expired.

Question 10

A company runs SAP S/4HANA in a multi-AZ deployment with a standby database in a different Availability Zone. The primary database fails. What is the expected behavior of the SAP HANA system replication?

Accepted Answer

The standby database automatically takes over as the new primary.. With SAP HANA system replication in synchronous mode, the standby database automatically takes over as the new primary when the primary fails, ensuring high availability. Option A is incorrect because a new standby is not automatically provisioned; the existing standby in the other AZ becomes the new primary. Option C is incorrect because the primary database is not restarted in the same AZ; the failover goes to the standby. Option D is incorrect because automatic failover eliminates the need for manual intervention.

Answer

A new standby database is automatically provisioned in the same AZ.

Answer

The primary database is automatically restarted in the same AZ.

Answer

The administrator must manually promote the standby database.

Question 11

A company runs a production application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The instances are in an Auto Scaling group across three Availability Zones. The operations team notices that during a recent deployment, a small percentage of instances failed health checks and were replaced, causing a brief increase in error rates. What is the MOST effective way to reduce deployment-related errors?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Auto Scaling group with a warm-up time in the instance refresh settings.. Configuring a warm-up time in the Auto Scaling group's instance refresh settings ensures that newly launched instances are fully initialized and pass health checks before they start receiving traffic. This prevents brief error spikes during deployments by allowing instances to stabilize before being marked as healthy and added to the ALB target group.

Answer

Use a lifecycle hook to delay instance registration until a script completes.

Answer

Increase the health check interval on the ALB to reduce rapid replacements.

Answer

Increase the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group to absorb failures.

Question 12

A company is designing a disaster recovery solution for SAP HANA on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1, and the DR site is in us-west-2. Which TWO strategies can be used to replicate HANA data to the DR region? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for ongoing replication. AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) can be used for ongoing replication of SAP HANA data to a DR region by continuously capturing changes from the source HANA database and applying them to a target HANA instance in us-west-2. DMS supports HANA as both source and target, enabling near-real-time replication without requiring native HANA replication features. Additionally, SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with ASYNC mode is a native HANA feature that replicates data at the database level asynchronously to a secondary system in the DR region. HSR ASYNC minimizes performance impact on the primary and provides a consistent database copy for failover. Both strategies are valid for cross-region disaster recovery of SAP HANA on AWS.

Answer

Copy EBS snapshots to the DR region using AWS CLI

Answer

Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication for HANA data files

Answer

Use AWS CloudEndure Disaster Recovery

Question 13

A company is migrating an SAP Business Suite system to AWS. They want to reduce storage costs by using Amazon S3 for archiving. Which TWO AWS services can be used to integrate SAP with Amazon S3 for archiving?

Accepted Answer

AWS Storage Gateway (file gateway). Options D and E are correct. AWS Storage Gateway (file gateway) provides a file interface to Amazon S3, allowing SAP systems to write archive files to file shares that are backed by S3, thus integrating SAP archiving with S3. SAP Data Archiving with S3 as the archive store is a native SAP solution that directly uses S3 as a target for archiving objects. Option A is incorrect because Amazon S3 Batch Operations performs bulk actions on existing S3 objects, not for archiving from SAP. Option B is incorrect because Amazon S3 Glacier is a storage class, not a service for integration; it can be used as a destination within S3 lifecycle policies but is not directly integrated with SAP. Option C is incorrect because Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) and is not designed for SAP archiving.

Answer

Amazon S3 Batch Operations

Answer

Amazon S3 Glacier

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Question 14

An SAP system is deployed on EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. Which AWS service should be used to automatically distribute incoming traffic across the SAP application servers?

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

Accepted Answer

Configure SSL/TLS certificates on the database and application servers. To encrypt traffic in transit between SAP application and database tiers, SSL/TLS certificates must be configured on both servers (B). This ensures that all data exchanged is encrypted. Security group rules (C) control access but do not provide encryption themselves; they only limit which traffic reaches the database, not whether that traffic is encrypted. No other option offers encryption. Therefore, only option B correctly fulfills the requirement of encrypting traffic in transit.

Answer

Attach an Internet Gateway to the VPC

Answer

Restrict security group rules to only allow traffic from the application tier

Answer

Create a VPC Peering connection between the subnets

Answer

Use network ACLs to allow only database traffic

Question 15

An SAP administrator needs to back up the SAP HANA database daily to Amazon S3 using the Backint agent. What is the prerequisite for this integration?

Accepted Answer

Install the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) on the HANA host.. The AWS Backint agent for SAP HANA requires the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) to be installed on the HANA host. The Backint agent uses SSM Agent to securely communicate with AWS Systems Manager, which orchestrates the backup workflow and enables the agent to write backup data directly to Amazon S3. Without the SSM Agent, the Backint agent cannot authenticate or transfer data to S3, making it a mandatory prerequisite.

Answer

Create a backup vault in AWS Backup.

Answer

Mount an Amazon EFS file system to the HANA host for backup storage.

Answer

Configure AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate data to S3.