PAS-C01 Practice Exam 51 — 20 Questions

Question 1

An organization is migrating a large SAP ERP system using SAP Landscape Virtualization Management (LVM) for system copy and refresh. During the migration, they encounter an error in LVM indicating that the target host is not reachable. What is the most likely cause?

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

Accepted Answer

The security groups do not allow inbound traffic from the LVM instance to the target host.. SAP Landscape Virtualization Management (LVM) orchestrates system copy and refresh by connecting from the LVM server to the target host over network ports (typically SSH on 22 or SAP-specific ports). If the target host is unreachable, the most likely cause is that the security group attached to the target EC2 instance does not permit inbound traffic from the LVM instance's security group or IP. This is a classic network-layer misconfiguration in AWS migrations.

Answer

The S3 bucket used for backup is not accessible.

Answer

The IAM role assigned to the LVM instance does not have sufficient permissions.

Answer

The AWS Database Migration Service is not configured correctly.

Question 2

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to a fleet of EC2 instances running SAP Web Dispatcher. The operations team notices that some instances are failing health checks intermittently. The ALB health check is configured with a 5-second interval, 2 healthy threshold, and 5 unhealthy threshold. The instances are all in the same Auto Scaling group. What is the most likely cause of the intermittent health check failures?

Accepted Answer

The health check path returns a non-200 status periodically due to a short-lived issue. Intermittent health check failures with a 5-second interval and 5 unhealthy threshold suggest the endpoint occasionally returns non-200 responses due to a transient condition (e.g., GC pause, brief backend dependency hiccup, or momentary thread exhaustion). The ALB marks the target unhealthy only after 5 consecutive failures, so a short-lived non-200 blip is the classic cause of intermittent failures.

Answer

The Auto Scaling group health check grace period is too short

Answer

The ALB health check interval is too long

Answer

The health check path returns a 200 status only when the application is fully loaded

Question 3

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS using EC2 instances with HANA data replication between two Availability Zones. The operations team needs to test a disaster recovery failover. What is the correct procedure to promote the secondary HANA system to primary?

Accepted Answer

Use the HANA takeover command on the secondary system. In SAP HANA system replication, promoting the secondary to primary is done via the HANA takeover command (hdbnsutil -sr_takeover or the equivalent in HANA Studio/Cockpit), which transitions the secondary site to primary role and allows it to accept writes. This is the correct, SAP-supported procedure for DR failover.

Answer

Stop the primary HANA system on the primary EC2 instance

Answer

Modify the DNS record to point to the secondary instance

Answer

Shut down the primary EC2 instance and wait for automatic failover

Question 4

An SAP administrator needs to ensure that all API calls made to create, modify, or delete AWS resources are logged for auditing. Which AWS service should be enabled?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail logs all API calls made to create, modify, or delete AWS resources, providing an audit trail of actions taken by users, roles, or services. Enabling CloudTrail is the correct way to ensure API activity is recorded for auditing purposes.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon GuardDuty

Question 5

An SAP workload running on AWS is experiencing intermittent performance issues. The operations team suspects that a recent change to a security group is causing traffic to be dropped. Which AWS service should the team use to analyze network traffic patterns and identify the source of the issue?

Accepted Answer

VPC Flow Logs. VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic information going to and from network interfaces in a VPC. They record accepted and rejected traffic, including the source and destination IP, ports, protocol, and whether the traffic was allowed or denied by security groups or network ACLs. This makes them the ideal tool to analyze if a security group change is causing traffic to be dropped.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 6

An SAP administrator needs to monitor the free space of EBS volumes across multiple EC2 instances running SAP. Which AWS service should be used to collect and visualize this data?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is the AWS monitoring and observability service that collects metrics, logs, and events from EC2 instances and can visualize them via dashboards and alarms. To monitor EBS free space, the administrator installs the CloudWatch agent on each SAP EC2 instance, which publishes disk-space metrics (e.g., LogicalDisk % Free Space on Windows or disk_used_percent on Linux) to CloudWatch. CloudWatch then provides the visualization and alerting layer required.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 7

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system requires high availability with automatic failover and minimal data loss. Which TWO strategies should the company implement to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP ASCS instance in a Multi-AZ configuration using AWS services.. Option B is correct because deploying the SAP ASCS (ABAP SAP Central Services) instance in a Multi-AZ configuration places the central services enqueue and message server across Availability Zones, so a failure in one AZ triggers automatic failover to the standby node and keeps the SAP system available. Option C is correct because SAP HANA System Replication in synchronous mode guarantees zero or near-zero data loss (RPO≈0) by committing to the secondary site before acknowledging the primary, and automatic takeover (via cluster manager such as Pacemaker) provides the required automatic failover. Option A is not suitable because daily snapshots only provide point-in-time recovery with up to 24 hours of data loss and no automatic failover. Option D is not suitable because AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery targets Region-level disaster recovery with asynchronous replication and typically minutes of data loss, not the minimal-loss automatic failover required here. Option E is not suitable because S3 cross-region replication applies to object storage and does not protect the SAP database or provide automatic failover of the ERP system.

Answer

Implement daily snapshots of all SAP EBS volumes using AWS Backup.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to replicate the entire SAP environment to a different Region.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 cross-region replication for all SAP application files.

Question 8

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue on an SAP NetWeaver system running on AWS. The system uses an Oracle database. The CPU utilization of the database server is consistently below 30%, but application response times are slow. Which THREE checks should the administrator perform to identify the bottleneck?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch metrics to check network throughput and latency between the application and database servers.. Option A is correct because with CPU below 30%, the bottleneck may be network-related; CloudWatch metrics such as NetworkIn/NetworkOut, NetworkPacketsIn/Out, and latency between the SAP application servers and the Oracle database can reveal bandwidth saturation or elevated round-trip times causing slow response. Option B is correct because low CPU does not rule out storage I/O contention; checking EBS volume queue length (e.g., VolumeQueueLength) and I/O wait times (CloudWatch EBS metrics plus OS-level iostat/await) identifies whether the Oracle datafiles, redo logs, or tempfiles are waiting on disk. Option C is correct because Oracle wait events such as enqueue waits (e.g., TX, TM locks) and latch contention (e.g., library cache, shared pool, cache buffers chains) directly expose database-level serialization that slows application response even when CPU is idle. Option D is not appropriate because adding CPU cores does not address a bottleneck when CPU utilization is already below 30% and would not diagnose the root cause. Option E is not appropriate because enabling EBS Elastic Volumes to increase size dynamically is a capacity change, not a diagnostic check, and volume size alone does not resolve queue-length or latency issues.

Answer

Increase the number of CPU cores on the database server.

Answer

Enable Amazon EBS Elastic Volumes to increase volume size dynamically.

Question 9

Which TWO of the following are best practices for running SAP HANA on AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use EBS-optimized instances or instances with dedicated EBS bandwidth.. Option B is correct because SAP HANA is highly I/O-intensive, so AWS best practice is to use EBS-optimized instances (or instance types with dedicated EBS bandwidth, such as the memory-optimized R5/R6i/X1/X2 families) to ensure consistent, low-latency storage throughput for the HANA data and log volumes. Option C is correct because SAP and AWS recommend running the HANA database on its own dedicated EC2 instance, separate from application servers, so that CPU, memory, and I/O resources are not shared and the database can be sized and scaled independently. Option A is not appropriate because burstable t3 instances do not meet SAP HANA's requirements for sustained high memory bandwidth, CPU performance, and certified instance types, even for non-production. Option D is wrong because SAP HANA is an in-memory database and AWS/SAP guidance is to size memory correctly and avoid relying on swap, which severely degrades performance and is not a supported practice. Option E is wrong because Amazon EFS is a shared NFS file system and is not certified or supported for HANA data volumes; HANA requires block storage such as Amazon EBS (e.g., gp3/io2) or supported instance store.

Answer

Use a burstable instance type (e.g., t3) for non-production HANA systems.

Answer

Configure a large swap space on the HANA instance to handle memory pressure.

Answer

Mount the HANA data volume using Amazon EFS for high throughput.

Question 10

An organization runs SAP BusinessObjects on AWS and wants to improve the performance of report generation. The current environment uses EBS gp2 volumes. Which TWO changes could potentially reduce report generation time?

Accepted Answer

Switch to EBS io2 Block Express volumes with higher IOPS.. Option D is correct because EBS io2 Block Express volumes deliver significantly higher IOPS and lower latency than gp2, and since report generation is I/O-intensive (reading data from the CMS, file store, and database), upgrading the storage tier directly reduces the time spent waiting on disk operations. Option E is correct because adding more SAP BusinessObjects application servers (e.g., additional Adaptive Processing Servers or Web Intelligence Processing Servers) horizontally scales the report-processing tier, distributing concurrent report jobs across more compute resources and reducing per-report generation time under load. Option A is not correct because increasing the root volume size only adds capacity, not IOPS or throughput, and gp2 performance scales with volume size only up to a point that is inferior to io2. Option B is not correct because EBS optimization only dedicates network bandwidth between the instance and EBS; it does not increase the underlying IOPS of gp2 volumes and is enabled by default on most modern instance types. Option C is not correct because automated snapshots are a backup/durability feature and have no effect on runtime report generation performance.

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS root volume.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the instance.

Answer

Configure automated snapshots of the EBS volumes.

Question 11

An SAP system running on AWS experienced a database failure. The recovery plan uses cross-Region Amazon RDS snapshots. The RPO is 15 minutes and the RTO is 2 hours. Which AWS service should be used to automate snapshot replication across Regions?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. AWS Backup can automate cross-Region snapshot copying with scheduling. Option A is incorrect because AWS CloudFormation is used for infrastructure as code, not for automating snapshot replication. Option C is incorrect because Amazon RDS automated backups are region-specific and cannot be cross-Region. Option D is incorrect because Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication is for objects, not RDS snapshots.

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

Amazon RDS automated backups

Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication

Question 12

A company is migrating an SAP system and wants to use a storage solution that provides persistent, high-performance block storage for the SAP HANA database. Which AWS storage option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes provide high performance and durability for HANA. EFS is file storage. S3 is object storage. Instance store is ephemeral.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Instance Store

Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Answer

Amazon S3

Question 13

A company is migrating an SAP system to AWS and wants to use AWS Launch Wizard for deployment. They have an existing VPC and subnets. Launch Wizard requires the selection of a subnet for each component. What is the best practice for selecting subnets for high availability?

Accepted Answer

Select subnets in different Availability Zones to ensure high availability.. For high availability, Launch Wizard deployments should select subnets in different Availability Zones so that SAP components (ASCS, PAS, database) are spread across physically isolated data centers. If one AZ fails, the system can fail over to the other. AWS Launch Wizard for SAP explicitly requires subnet selection per component and recommends multi-AZ placement for production HA.

Answer

Use only private subnets without public access.

Answer

Select a single subnet in one Availability Zone for simplicity.

Answer

Create a new VPC and subnets specifically for Launch Wizard.

Question 14

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 2 TB in size and has a high transaction rate. The migration must have minimal downtime. Which AWS service should be used for the migration?

Accepted Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is designed to migrate databases to AWS with minimal downtime by continuously replicating data changes while the source remains operational. It supports homogeneous migrations like Oracle to RDS for Oracle and can handle high transaction rates with change data capture (CDC). DMS is the correct choice for a 2 TB database requiring minimal downtime.

Answer

AWS Snowball Edge

Answer

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS)

Answer

AWS DataSync

Question 15

A company runs SAP on AWS and wants to monitor operating system metrics such as memory usage, disk space, and process status using Amazon CloudWatch. Which agent configuration is required on the SAP application and database servers to send these metrics to CloudWatch?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Agent. The Amazon CloudWatch Agent is the component that runs on EC2 instances (including SAP application and database servers) to collect guest-level OS metrics such as memory usage, disk space, and process status, and publish them to CloudWatch. The default EC2 hypervisor-level metrics do not include memory or disk usage, so the CloudWatch Agent must be installed and configured with a JSON config file specifying the metrics to collect.

Answer

AWS X-Ray Daemon

Answer

EC2 Launch Agent

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Agent

Question 16

Which TWO of the following are benefits of using SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) on AWS? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

Supports replication across AWS Regions for disaster recovery. Option A is correct because SAP HANA System Replication supports multi-tier and multi-region topologies on AWS, allowing the secondary site to be placed in a different AWS Region so it can serve as a disaster recovery target if the primary Region fails. Option B is correct because HSR continuously ships redo log entries from the primary to the secondary system in synchronous or asynchronous mode, providing near real-time replication that keeps the secondary ready for a fast takeover and thus high availability. Option C is not a benefit of HSR, since HSR is a replication and failover mechanism, not a scale-out or workload-distribution feature; query performance improvements come from SAP HANA scale-out or read-enabled secondaries, which is a different capability. Option D is not correct because HSR does not automatically scale storage; storage sizing and growth are handled by the underlying AWS storage (for example, EBS volumes) and must be managed separately. Option E is not correct because HSR does not automatically load balance read queries between primary and secondary; read access to a secondary requires explicit configuration such as SAP HANA active/active read-enabled mode, and even then it is not automatic load balancing by HSR itself.

Answer

Improves query performance by distributing workloads

Answer

Automatically scales storage based on database growth

Answer

Automatically load balances read queries between primary and secondary

Question 17

A company runs SAP on AWS and notices that the SAP application performance degrades during peak hours. The system uses a db.r5.4xlarge RDS for SAP HANA database. Which AWS service should be used to analyze the database performance metrics and identify bottlenecks?

Accepted Answer

Amazon RDS Performance Insights. Amazon RDS Performance Insights is the correct service because it provides a performance dashboard with detailed database metrics, allowing you to identify bottlenecks such as high CPU, memory, or I/O usage. AWS X-Ray is used for tracing requests across microservices, not for database performance analysis. AWS CloudTrail logs API calls for auditing, not performance metrics. Amazon CloudWatch Logs is for storing and monitoring log files, not for real-time database performance analysis.

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Question 18

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API calls. The security team wants to detect unauthorized attempts to modify security group rules and send real-time alerts. Which TWO AWS services should be used together to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). Amazon CloudWatch Events (or EventBridge) can capture CloudTrail API calls related to security group modifications (e.g., AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress, RevokeSecurityGroupEgress) and route them to an SNS topic. SNS then sends real-time alerts (e.g., email, SMS) to the security team. This combination provides event-driven, near-instantaneous notification without polling or custom code.

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon GuardDuty

Question 19

A company is performing a large-scale migration of multiple SAP systems to AWS. They need to automate the replication of servers from on-premises to AWS while minimizing downtime. Which AWS service should they use to replicate entire servers (OS, applications, and data) in real-time?

Accepted Answer

AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN). AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) replicates entire servers in real-time, enabling automated migration with minimal downtime. Option B is correct. Option A (AWS CloudFormation) is for infrastructure as code, not replication. Option C (AWS DataSync) is for file storage, not full server replication. Option D (AWS Database Migration Service) is for databases only.

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS DataSync

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Question 20

A company is migrating its on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. They need to minimize downtime and ensure data consistency. Which AWS service should they use for the initial data load and ongoing replication?

Accepted Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is purpose-built for migrating databases to AWS with minimal downtime. It performs the initial full load and then continuous replication (change data capture) from the source Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle, keeping data consistent until cutover. DMS supports heterogeneous and homogeneous migrations and handles ongoing replication natively.

Answer

AWS Snowball Edge

Answer

AWS DataSync

Answer

AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT)