PAS-C01 Practice Test 48 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is running an SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. During a planned maintenance window, the operations team needs to apply an SAP kernel patch that requires stopping all SAP instances. Which AWS service can be used to orchestrate the stop/start sequence of multiple EC2 instances and ensure proper dependencies are maintained?

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

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Automation. (AWS Systems Manager Automation) is correct because it provides runbooks that can orchestrate the stop/start sequence of multiple EC2 instances with dependency management and error handling, ideal for SAP maintenance. Option B (AWS Step Functions) is less suitable because it requires custom Lambda functions to manage EC2 states, adding complexity. Option C (AWS CloudFormation) is for provisioning infrastructure, not ad-hoc operational tasks. Option D (Amazon EC2 Run Command) is for running individual commands on instances, not for orchestrating multi-step sequences with dependencies.

Answer

AWS Step Functions

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

Amazon EC2 Run Command

Question 2

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting an issue where the SAP system is not responding. The administrator checks the AWS Management Console and finds that the EC2 instance status checks are failing. Which three actions should the administrator take to recover the instance? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Check the system logs for errors. The administrator should first check the system logs (Option B) to gather diagnostic information about the failure. Rebooting the instance (Option D) can resolve transient issues without losing instance state. If the issue persists, stopping and starting the instance (Option E) migrates it to new underlying hardware, which can fix hardware-related failures. Changing the instance type (Option A) does not address hardware issues causing status checks to fail. Attaching a new EBS volume (Option C) does not help with instance health issues.

Answer

Change the instance type

Answer

Attach a new EBS volume

Question 3

A company runs an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance. During a maintenance window, an administrator needs to stop the instance but ensure that the data in the attached EBS volumes is preserved and the instance can be started later without data loss. Which action should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Stop the instance from the AWS Management Console.. Stopping an EBS-backed EC2 instance preserves the data on the EBS volumes, allowing the instance to be started later without data loss. Option A (hibernate) is for instances with specific configurations and may not preserve all SAP HANA states. Option B (terminate) would delete the instance and potentially the volumes, causing data loss. Option D (reboot) does not stop the instance and does not provide a clean state for maintenance.

Answer

Hibernate the instance from the AWS Management Console.

Answer

Terminate the instance from the AWS Management Console.

Answer

Reboot the instance from the AWS Management Console.

Question 4

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator has run a query to check the backup status of an SAP HANA database. The output shows that the backup on January 17 failed. What is the most appropriate next step?

Accepted Answer

Investigate the backup logs for the failed backup to identify the cause.. A failed backup requires investigation to determine the root cause before taking any corrective action. Checking the backup logs will provide details on why the backup failed, such as insufficient permissions, disk space issues, or configuration errors. Option A is incorrect because restoring the database is premature without diagnosing the failure. Option C is incorrect because restarting the backup without investigation may lead to the same failure. Option D is incorrect because ignoring the failure could allow a recurring issue to affect future backups.

Answer

Restore the database from the last successful backup to ensure data integrity.

Answer

Immediately restart the failed backup from the catalog.

Answer

Ignore the failure because subsequent backups are successful.

Question 5

An SAP Basis administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of all EC2 instances running SAP applications. The team wants to receive alerts when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to set up this monitoring and alerting?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it can collect CPU utilization metrics from EC2 instances and trigger alarms when the metric exceeds a threshold (e.g., 80% for 5 consecutive minutes). AWS Trusted Advisor provides best-practice recommendations but cannot create custom metric alarms. AWS CloudTrail is for auditing API calls, not monitoring performance metrics. AWS Config tracks resource configuration changes, not real-time performance metrics.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Config

Question 6

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses a central syslog server to collect logs from all SAP instances. The operations team wants to use a managed AWS service to centralize log storage and enable real-time analysis. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Amazon CloudWatch Logs is a managed service that can aggregate logs from multiple Amazon EC2 instances and other sources, providing centralized storage and real-time monitoring and analysis. It is the most appropriate choice for this use case because it offers built-in log aggregation, real-time analysis with CloudWatch Logs Insights, and integration with AWS services. Amazon Athena (Option A) is an interactive query service for analyzing data in Amazon S3, not designed for real-time log ingestion from multiple sources. Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose (Option C) is a streaming data delivery service that can capture and load data into destinations like S3 or Redshift, but it requires additional setup for real-time analysis and is more complex for simple log centralization. Amazon S3 (Option D) is an object storage service that can store logs but does not natively provide real-time analysis capabilities.

Answer

Amazon Athena

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Answer

Amazon S3

Question 7

A company is running SAP on AWS and wants to automate the deployment of new SAP application servers. The company uses AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. Which AWS service should they use to run custom scripts during the CloudFormation stack creation to configure the SAP application?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. AWS CloudFormation supports custom resources, which can invoke AWS Lambda functions to run custom scripts during stack creation, making it suitable for configuring SAP applications. Option A is wrong because AWS Systems Manager Run Command is not directly integrated into CloudFormation as a custom resource; it can be invoked via Lambda or other means but not natively. Option B is wrong because AWS CodeDeploy is used for code deployments to existing instances, not for initial configuration during CloudFormation stack creation. Option D is wrong because AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service using Chef/Puppet, not directly integrated with CloudFormation for running custom scripts.

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Run Command

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Question 8

An SAP HANA database on AWS experiences a failover from the primary to the secondary node. After the failover, the secondary node (now primary) is running on a different AZ. The SAP application cannot connect to the new primary. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The application connection string points to the old primary's IP address.. After a failover, the new primary node has a different private IP address than the old primary. The SAP application's connection string likely points to the old primary's IP, so it cannot connect to the new primary. Option A is incorrect because HANA system replication can be configured correctly and still cause connectivity issues if the application does not update its connection information. Option B is incorrect because security groups are attached to instances and can be updated, but the issue is typically the IP address change. Option C is incorrect because EBS volumes are automatically attached during a managed failover; connectivity issues stem from network configuration, not storage.

Answer

HANA system replication is not configured correctly.

Answer

The security group for the new primary does not allow inbound traffic from the app.

Answer

The EBS volumes are not attached to the new primary.

Question 9

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses a shared file system via Amazon EFS for transport files. Recently, the SAP system experienced slowness when importing transports. The CloudWatch metrics show high BurstCreditBalance for the EFS file system. What action should be taken to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Enable Max I/O performance mode on the EFS file system.. When BurstCreditBalance is high, it indicates that the file system is not using its burst credits, meaning it is operating at baseline throughput. To improve performance, enable Max I/O performance mode on the EFS file system, which provides higher throughput and IOPS. Option B is incorrect because changing to General Purpose mode does not increase throughput; it may even reduce performance. Option C is incorrect because encryption does not affect throughput. Option D is incorrect because BurstCreditBalance cannot be purchased; it is automatically accrued and consumed.

Answer

Change the performance mode to General Purpose.

Answer

Enable encryption at rest to improve data transfer speed.

Answer

Increase the BurstCreditBalance by purchasing additional credits.

Question 10

A company has an SAP environment with a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours and a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which backup strategy meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Incremental backups every 15 minutes and log backups every 5 minutes.. Incremental backups (every 15 minutes) combined with log backups (every 5 minutes) allow for a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and can meet the 2-hour recovery time objective (RTO) if the database is appropriately sized and restore procedures are optimized. Option A is incorrect because log backups every 30 minutes result in a potential data loss of up to 30 minutes, exceeding the required 15-minute RPO. Option B is incorrect because weekly full and daily differential backups provide an RPO of up to 24 hours. Option D is incorrect because hourly EBS snapshots do not provide the granularity needed for a 15-minute RPO and restoring from snapshots can be slower than from SAP HANA-native backups.

Answer

Daily full backups to Amazon S3 and log backups every 30 minutes.

Answer

Weekly full backups and daily differential backups.

Answer

Hourly EBS snapshots and continuous log shipping to S3.

Question 11

An SAP system administrator notices that the SAP HANA database backup job to Amazon S3 is failing intermittently. The backup script uses the AWS CLI. Which step should be taken to diagnose the issue?

Accepted Answer

Check AWS CloudTrail logs for S3 API call errors. AWS CloudTrail logs record API calls made to Amazon S3, including errors, which can help diagnose why the backup job is failing. Option A is wrong because S3 Transfer Acceleration only improves upload speed, not reliability. Option C is wrong because S3 Lifecycle policies manage object expiration and are unrelated to diagnosing backup failures. Option D is wrong because switching from AWS CLI to SDK does not address the root cause; diagnostics should focus on API call errors, permissions, or network issues.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket

Answer

Configure S3 Lifecycle policy to expire incomplete multipart uploads

Answer

Modify the backup script to use the AWS SDK instead of CLI

Question 12

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and needs to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy. The DR site must have a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 30 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which two AWS services should be used together to achieve these objectives? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication. To achieve an RTO of 30 minutes and RPO of 15 minutes for SAP HANA on AWS, the best combination is SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) and AWS CloudEndure Disaster Recovery. HSR provides near-synchronous replication, enabling an RPO of seconds and rapid failover, meeting the RTO. CloudEndure offers continuous replication at the server level, with sub-second RPO and fast recovery, complementing HSR for additional disaster recovery scenarios. Option A (AWS DMS) is for database migration, not DR. Option D (Amazon S3) is for object storage, not suitable for real-time replication. Option E (Amazon EBS snapshots) cannot achieve a 15-minute RPO because automated snapshot schedules have a minimum interval of 1 hour, and restoring from snapshots takes time exceeding the 30-minute RTO.

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots

Question 13

A company has an SAP landscape with multiple instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The operations team needs to ensure that the ALB targets are deregistered before an instance is terminated during a patching activity. Which AWS service can automate this?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks can automatically deregister instances from an Application Load Balancer before termination. Option B is incorrect because AWS Systems Manager State Manager is used to maintain consistent configuration of instances, not for target deregistration. Option C is incorrect because AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a platform for deploying web applications, not for managing ALB target deregistration for SAP. Option D is incorrect because AWS Lambda is a compute service that can be used as a target for lifecycle hooks, but the service that inherently provides the lifecycle hook mechanism is Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.

Answer

AWS Systems Manager State Manager

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS Lambda

Question 14

A company is running SAP on AWS and uses CloudWatch to monitor the SAP HANA database. The database administrator wants to create a dashboard that shows the current memory utilization of all HANA instances. Which CloudWatch feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

CloudWatch Dashboards. CloudWatch Dashboards (Option D) allow you to create custom views that display metrics from multiple sources, including memory utilization from all HANA instances, in a single pane. Option A (CloudWatch Logs) is for collecting and storing log data, not for visualizing metrics. Option B (CloudWatch Alarms) is used to trigger actions based on metric thresholds, not for creating dashboards. Option C (CloudWatch Events) is for event-driven automation, not for metric visualization.

Answer

CloudWatch Logs

Answer

CloudWatch Alarms

Answer

CloudWatch Events

Question 15

A company wants to automate the start and stop of SAP EC2 instances during non-business hours to reduce costs. Which AWS service is best suited for this task?

Accepted Answer

AWS Instance Scheduler. (AWS Instance Scheduler) is correct because it is a dedicated solution to automate instance start/stop on a schedule. Option A (AWS Auto Scaling) is for scaling based on demand, not scheduling. Option B (Amazon CloudWatch Events) can trigger Lambda but requires custom code. Option D (AWS Systems Manager) can run commands but is not purpose-built for scheduling.

Answer

AWS Auto Scaling

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Events

Answer

AWS Systems Manager