PAS-C01 Practice Test 4 — 10 Questions

Question 1

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?

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

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.

Question 2

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses a custom AMI for their EC2 instances. They want to ensure that all instances launched from this AMI automatically have the SAP host agent installed and configured. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Create a new AMI that includes the SAP host agent pre-installed and configured.. Baking the SAP host agent into the AMI ensures that every instance launched from that AMI automatically has the agent installed and configured with no additional steps. This is the most efficient approach as it avoids post-launch configuration, reduces potential failure points, and ensures consistency.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Run Command to install the agent after launch.

Answer

Use a user data script that installs and configures the SAP host agent at instance launch.

Answer

Use AWS CodeDeploy to automatically deploy the agent to new instances.

Question 3

A company is running a critical SAP application on SAP HANA in an AWS Single-AZ deployment. The application has experienced downtime twice in the last month due to underlying hardware failures. What is the MOST cost-effective solution to minimize future downtime without compromising performance?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP HANA database in a Multi-AZ configuration using SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) across Availability Zones.. Deploying SAP HANA in a Multi-AZ configuration using SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) across Availability Zones provides synchronous replication and automatic failover in case of hardware failure. This minimizes downtime without requiring a larger instance or manual intervention, and maintains performance by using the same instance type and storage configuration as the primary.

Answer

Move the SAP HANA instance to a larger instance type to improve hardware reliability.

Answer

Use Dedicated Hosts to ensure physical isolation from other AWS customers.

Answer

Implement automated snapshots of the SAP HANA data volume and restore in case of failure.

Question 4

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS using a clustered environment with two EC2 instances in an active/passive configuration. The cluster uses a shared EFS file system for the SAP HANA shared volume. The operations team recently migrated the EFS file system from the previous generation to Elastic Throughput mode to improve performance. After the migration, the HANA database becomes unresponsive intermittently. The team notices that the EFS mount target is in a different Availability Zone than the active HANA instance. What is the most likely cause of the unresponsiveness?

Accepted Answer

The EFS mount target is in a different Availability Zone than the active HANA instance, causing high latency and potential timeouts.. EFS mount targets are Availability Zone-specific, and cross-AZ access introduces additional network latency and potential timeouts. For a latency-sensitive workload like SAP HANA, which requires low-latency shared storage, mounting an EFS file system from a different AZ than the active HANA instance causes intermittent unresponsiveness due to increased round-trip times and possible packet loss.

Answer

The EFS file system does not provide sufficient IOPS for HANA workloads.

Answer

The EFS Elastic Throughput mode is throttling the HANA database traffic.

Answer

The EFS file system has reached its maximum number of concurrent connections.

Question 5

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance degradation. The SAP administrator wants to monitor the EC2 instance's CPU utilization and memory usage. Which AWS service should be used to collect memory metrics?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Agent. Amazon CloudWatch by default collects only basic metrics like CPU utilization, not memory usage. The Amazon CloudWatch Agent is required to collect custom metrics such as memory utilization from EC2 instances by sending data to CloudWatch via the PutMetricData API. This agent can be installed on the SAP EC2 instance to capture both CPU and memory metrics for performance monitoring.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch (default metrics)

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Inventory

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 6

Which TWO options are valid strategies for backing up an SAP HANA database running on Amazon EC2? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA Backint to back up to Amazon S3.. Option B is correct because SAP HANA's Backint API integrates with external backup tools, and on AWS you can configure Backint to write full, differential, and log backups directly to Amazon S3, which is a supported and durable target for HANA backups on EC2. Option C is correct because AWS Backup can orchestrate EBS snapshots of the EBS volumes holding HANA data and log files, providing crash-consistent volume-level backups that can be scheduled and retained per backup plan. Option A is wrong because Amazon RDS is a managed database service and does not host or back up SAP HANA, which runs on EC2 as a self-managed database. Option D is wrong because S3 Lifecycle policies only transition or expire objects already stored in S3; they are not themselves a backup strategy for HANA and cannot create the backups. Option E is wrong because EC2 instance store is ephemeral, non-persistent storage that loses data on instance stop, termination, or hardware failure, so it cannot serve as a reliable backup target.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS automated backups for SAP HANA.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies to transition HANA backups to Glacier.

Answer

Use EC2 instance store to copy HANA data files.

Question 7

A company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS with a large SAP HANA database. They observe high memory utilization and need to scale up. Which instance type should they choose to provide the highest memory capacity for SAP HANA?

Accepted Answer

u-12tb1.112xlarge. The u-12tb1.112xlarge is the correct choice because it is part of AWS's bare metal 'u' instance family, specifically designed for large in-memory databases like SAP HANA, offering up to 12 TB of RAM. This instance type provides the highest memory capacity among AWS instances, making it suitable for scaling up SAP HANA when high memory utilization is observed.

Answer

r5.24xlarge

Answer

x1e.32xlarge

Answer

m5.24xlarge

Question 8

A company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS. They plan to use the SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) connector to automate system copy and relocation. What is a prerequisite for using the AWS LaMa connector?

Accepted Answer

An IAM role with permissions for EC2, EBS, and CloudFormation actions. The AWS LaMa connector automates SAP system copy and relocation by orchestrating EC2, EBS, and CloudFormation actions. An IAM role with permissions for these services is required so that LaMa can programmatically manage infrastructure resources (e.g., stop/start instances, snapshot volumes, create CloudFormation stacks) without manual intervention. This role is assumed by the LaMa connector when executing workflows.

Answer

An EC2 Auto Scaling group configured for the SAP application tier

Answer

AWS Systems Manager managed instances for all SAP servers

Answer

SSH keys for all SAP instances to allow LaMa to connect

Question 9

An SAP HANA database is running on an r5.8xlarge instance. The administrator notices high swap usage and suspects memory pressure. Which AWS metric should be monitored to confirm memory utilization?

Accepted Answer

CWAgent namespace metrics. The CWAgent namespace metrics are correct because the CloudWatch agent, when installed on the EC2 instance, can capture detailed OS-level memory utilization metrics (such as `mem_used_percent` and `mem_available_percent`) that are not available in the default EC2 or EBS namespaces. This allows the administrator to directly confirm memory pressure causing high swap usage on the SAP HANA database.

Answer

AWS/Lambda namespace metrics

Answer

EC2 namespace metrics

Answer

EBS namespace metrics

Question 10

An SAP administrator is planning a Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. The DR site is in a different AWS Region. Which AWS service can replicate SAP HANA data to the DR region with low Recovery Point Objective (RPO)?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication with log shipping. SAP HANA System Replication with log shipping is the correct choice because it provides near-synchronous or synchronous replication of HANA data and transaction logs to a secondary system in another AWS Region, enabling a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of seconds or even zero data loss. This native HANA feature is optimized for SAP workloads and integrates directly with HANA's persistence layer, making it the most suitable DR method for low RPO requirements.

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots copied to the DR region

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication

Answer

Amazon S3 cross-region replication