PAS-C01 Practice Test 35 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An organization is migrating a legacy Windows-based .NET application to AWS. The application currently uses IIS and SQL Server on a single server. They want to minimize changes to the application code. Which migration strategy is most appropriate?

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

Accepted Answer

Rehost the application on Amazon EC2 with the same OS and database. Rehosting (lift-and-shift) involves moving the application to AWS as-is, typically using Amazon EC2, which minimizes code changes. Option B is correct. Option A (Replatform) would involve moving to Amazon RDS for SQL Server and Elastic Beanstalk, which may require some configuration changes. Option C (Refactor) would require significant code changes to adopt microservices. Option D (Repurchase) means buying a new SaaS product, which is not minimal change.

Answer

Replatform by moving to Amazon RDS for SQL Server and Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

Refactor the application to use a microservices architecture

Answer

Repurchase by moving to a SaaS-based application

Question 2

A company is migrating an SAP ERP system to AWS. The SAP application runs on a Windows Server with an MSSQL database. The migration must be completed within a strict 4-hour downtime window. The current database is 500 GB. Which migration strategy should be used to meet the downtime requirement?

Accepted Answer

Use an SAP-certified backup/restore tool (e.g., Commvault) to restore to Amazon EC2 with MSSQL. For migrating an SAP ERP system with MSSQL database to AWS within a 4-hour downtime window, using an SAP-certified backup/restore tool (e.g., Commvault) to restore to Amazon EC2 with MSSQL is the best approach. This method leverages native MSSQL backup and restore capabilities, which are optimized for large databases and can complete within the downtime window. Option A (SAP SWPM export/import) is typically slower and may exceed 4 hours. Option C (AWS DMS with ongoing replication) is not ideal because DMS may not fully support SAP-specific schemas and could introduce compatibility issues, and the cutover may not be faster than backup/restore. Option D (AWS CloudEndure Migration) is designed for server-level replication, not database-optimized transfer, and may not meet the strict time constraint.

Answer

Use SAP SWPM export/import to migrate the database

Answer

Use AWS DMS with ongoing replication, then cutover

Answer

Use AWS CloudEndure Migration to replicate the entire server

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

A company is deploying a serverless application using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB. The application must meet high availability and low latency requirements. The company expects traffic to spike unpredictably. Which THREE strategies should the company implement to ensure the application can handle the load? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Enable API Gateway caching with a suitable TTL. API Gateway caching stores responses from your endpoints, reducing the number of calls made to the backend Lambda function and DynamoDB. By setting a suitable TTL, you ensure that frequently accessed data is served from the cache, which lowers latency and offloads the backend during unpredictable traffic spikes. This directly supports high availability by preventing backend overload.

Answer

Set the Lambda function timeout to the maximum value of 15 minutes

Answer

Configure DynamoDB auto scaling with a minimum capacity of 10 read and 10 write capacity units

Question 5

An SAP administrator created the IAM policy above for an EC2 instance role used by SAP HANA Backint agent. The backup to S3 fails with access denied. What is the likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The policy grants permissions on objects but not on the bucket itself. For s3:PutObject and s3:GetObject, a bucket-level permission is also required for some operations.. The policy grants s3:PutObject and s3:GetObject on objects within the bucket (using the "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*" resource), but does not include a bucket-level permission such as s3:PutObject or s3:GetObject on the bucket itself ("arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name"). For certain S3 operations, including multipart uploads and object writes that require bucket-level authorization checks, the IAM policy must explicitly allow the action on both the bucket and the object ARN. Without this, the SAP HANA Backint agent fails with access denied.

Answer

The policy does not allow s3:PutObject.

Answer

The policy does not allow ec2:CreateSnapshot.

Answer

The policy does not allow s3:ListBucket.

Question 6

An SAP system is running on AWS and needs to be accessible over the internet securely. Which AWS service should be used to provide secure remote access for administrators?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. AWS Systems Manager Session Manager provides secure, auditable, browser-based or CLI-based remote access to EC2 instances without opening inbound ports, managing SSH keys, or using bastion hosts. It leverages the AWS SSM Agent and IAM policies to authenticate and authorize administrators, making it the most secure and operationally efficient option for SAP system administration on AWS.

Answer

Set up an AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection from the corporate network

Answer

Use Amazon WorkSpaces to provide a virtual desktop for administrators

Answer

Configure the EC2 instance in a public subnet with SSH access from the internet

Question 7

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system requires high availability for the SAP central services (ASCS) and must support automatic failover. Which AWS architecture should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy ASCS on an EC2 instance in an Auto Scaling group with a lifecycle hook that triggers a Lambda function to reattach the ASCS cluster resources.. It describes a pattern for achieving automatic failover of SAP ASCS using an Auto Scaling group with a lifecycle hook. When the ASCS instance fails, the Auto Scaling group launches a new instance, and the lifecycle hook triggers a Lambda function that reattaches the cluster resources (e.g., EIP, EBS volumes, or shared file systems) to the new instance, enabling the SAP ENSA2 or ENSA1 cluster to resume operations without manual intervention.

Answer

Configure a Network Load Balancer in front of two ASCS instances in different Availability Zones.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ to host the SAP central services.

Answer

Run ASCS on a single EC2 instance in a single Availability Zone with an Elastic IP address.

Question 8

A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The operations team reports that the application becomes unresponsive for about 30 seconds every hour at the same time. The team checks the ALB access logs and notices that during the outage, the ALB returns HTTP 504 errors. The RDS monitoring shows a spike in CPU usage and active connections during the same period. The application team confirms there are no scheduled jobs during that time. What should the team do to diagnose the root cause?

Accepted Answer

Check the RDS Enhanced Monitoring metrics for the database instance to identify resource bottlenecks such as high memory pressure or disk I/O.. The symptoms—hourly 30-second unresponsiveness, HTTP 504 errors from the ALB, and a correlated spike in RDS CPU and active connections—point to a database-side bottleneck. RDS Enhanced Monitoring provides OS-level metrics (memory, disk I/O, CPU) that can reveal resource contention or throttling events (e.g., swap usage, IOPS exhaustion) not visible in standard CloudWatch metrics, enabling precise root cause identification.

Answer

Review the security group rules for the database to ensure the application can connect.

Answer

Review the ALB target group health checks and ensure the EC2 instances are passing the health check.

Answer

Increase the EC2 instance size to handle more concurrent connections.

Question 9

An organization runs SAP ERP on AWS with an SAP HANA database. The database is deployed on an EC2 instance with EBS storage. The company is planning to upgrade the HANA database from version 2.0 to 2.0 SPS 05. The upgrade process requires a system copy to a new instance. The company wants to minimize the downtime during the upgrade and ensure that the existing system remains available until the new system is ready. The current HANA instance has 1 TB of data. The company has a test environment that can be used for the upgrade. Which approach should the company take to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Set up SAP HANA System Replication from the production instance to a new instance. Perform the upgrade on the replica. Once upgraded, perform a takeover to make the new instance the primary.. SAP HANA System Replication allows you to replicate data from the production instance to a new instance in near real-time. You can then perform the upgrade on the replica while the production system remains fully available. Once the upgrade is complete and validated, a takeover operation promotes the replica to primary, minimizing downtime to just the seconds required for the takeover and DNS switch.

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to export the production database to a file, import it into a new instance, and upgrade. Then redirect users to the new instance.

Answer

Perform the upgrade directly on the production HANA instance during a maintenance window.

Answer

Take a full backup of the production HANA database, restore it to a new instance, and perform the upgrade on the new instance. Then switch DNS to the new instance.

Question 10

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing high latency for disk I/O. The system uses Amazon EBS gp2 volumes. The operations team notices that the volume queue depth is consistently high. Which change is most likely to reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Migrate from gp2 to gp3 volumes and increase IOPS.. Gp3 volumes offer a baseline performance that is higher than gp2 for a given size, and they allow you to independently increase IOPS without needing to provision more storage. Since the volume queue depth is consistently high, the bottleneck is likely due to insufficient IOPS, and migrating to gp3 with increased IOPS directly addresses this by providing more I/O capacity, reducing latency.

Answer

Increase the EC2 instance size to get more EBS bandwidth.

Answer

Configure RAID 0 across multiple EBS volumes.

Answer

Increase the block size of the file system.

Question 11

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance issues. The system uses a shared file system (SAP transport directory) mounted from an NFS server. During migration, the team wants to improve performance and reduce complexity. Which AWS service should replace the NFS server?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS provides a fully managed NFS file system that can be shared across multiple EC2 instances, making it an ideal replacement for the NFS server in SAP transport directory scenarios. Option A (Amazon S3 with S3FS) is incorrect because S3 is object storage and S3FS is a FUSE-based tool that adds complexity and can cause performance issues, not suitable for SAP transport. Option B (Amazon FSx for Windows File Server) is incorrect because it uses SMB protocol, while SAP transport directories typically require NFS and run on Linux instances. Option C (AWS Storage Gateway file gateway) adds unnecessary complexity as it is designed for hybrid storage and caching, not as a direct NFS replacement for this use case.

Answer

Amazon S3 with S3FS

Answer

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway (file gateway)

Question 12

Refer to the exhibit. An SAP administrator is creating an IAM policy for launching EC2 instances. Which instance type will the policy allow?

Accepted Answer

r5.4xlarge and r5.8xlarge. The IAM policy allows ec2:RunInstances with a condition that restricts instance types to those matching 'r5.4xlarge' or 'r5.8xlarge' via a ForAllValues:StringEquals condition on ec2:InstanceType. Since the condition uses a wildcard-free list, only the explicitly listed instance types are permitted. Options A, B, and C are not in the list, so they are denied.

Answer

r5.16xlarge

Answer

r5.xlarge

Answer

r5.2xlarge

Question 13

A company is planning to migrate SAP S/4HANA to AWS. The system has a high transaction rate and requires low network latency between SAP application servers and the database. Which AWS infrastructure design minimizes network latency between the SAP application tier and the database tier?

Accepted Answer

Place all SAP application servers and the database server in the same Availability Zone.. Placing all SAP application servers and the database server in the same Availability Zone (AZ) minimizes network latency by keeping traffic within a single, high-bandwidth, low-latency AWS data center. SAP S/4HANA with a high transaction rate is sensitive to inter-AZ latency (typically 1-2 ms), which can degrade performance for synchronous database calls. Co-locating all tiers in one AZ ensures the lowest possible round-trip time for SAP's dialog work processes and database commits.

Answer

Place the database server in one Availability Zone and application servers in another to improve fault tolerance.

Answer

Use a cluster placement group for the application servers and a separate placement group for the database.

Answer

Use a mix of instance types optimized for compute and memory across different Availability Zones.

Question 14

A company has a CloudFormation stack that creates an EC2 instance with a custom AMI. The stack fails with the error 'Resource creation cancelled' during creation. The engineer checks the stack events and sees that the EC2 instance creation succeeded, but the subsequent creation of an EBS volume failed. What is the MOST likely reason for the failure?

Accepted Answer

The EBS volume creation failed, causing the stack to roll back and cancel the instance. When an EBS volume creation fails in a CloudFormation stack, the stack initiates a rollback of all previously created resources, including the EC2 instance. The 'Resource creation cancelled' error appears for the EC2 instance because its creation was successful but then undone during the rollback, not because it failed initially.

Answer

The EC2 instance creation failed and then was cancelled

Answer

The EC2 instance had a DeletionPolicy of Retain, which prevented rollback

Answer

The EC2 instance depended on the EBS volume, and the dependency caused a timeout

Question 15

A company is migrating an SAP Business Suite system to AWS. The source database is Oracle. The target is Amazon RDS for Oracle. Which AWS service should be used to automate the schema conversion and data migration?

Accepted Answer

Both AWS SCT and AWS DMS. Schema conversion is handled by AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT) and data migration with minimal downtime is handled by AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). Option A is wrong because SCT alone does not migrate data. Option C is wrong because AWS Application Discovery Service is used for discovery, not migration. Option D is wrong because DMS alone does not convert schemas.

Answer

AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT)

Answer

AWS Application Discovery Service

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)