PAS-C01 Practice Exam 62 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company runs an SAP HANA database on an Amazon EC2 instance with 4 TB of memory. The company wants to reduce the time it takes to restart the HANA database after a planned maintenance event. The HANA data volume is on an Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volume. Which feature should a SAP specialist enable to speed up the restart by loading data into memory from a persistent storage location?

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

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA fast restart. SAP HANA fast restart uses a persistent memory-mapped file to store column store data on the data volume, allowing HANA to reload data into memory quickly after a restart. This significantly reduces restart time for large instances. Dynamic tiering, extension nodes, and smart data streaming do not provide this capability and are not relevant to accelerating restart.

Answer

SAP HANA dynamic tiering

Answer

SAP HANA smart data streaming

Answer

SAP HANA extension node

Question 2

A company runs an SAP NetWeaver application server on AWS. The application uses a shared file system for SAP global transport directory and requires high availability across two Availability Zones. The company wants to minimize operational overhead and ensure the file system can be mounted by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously. Which AWS storage solution should be used?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS with a mount target in each Availability Zone, using the EFS Standard storage class.. For a shared SAP global transport directory that must be accessible across multiple Availability Zones and mounted by multiple EC2 instances, Amazon EFS is the appropriate choice. It provides a fully managed NFS file system with Multi-AZ resilience, supports concurrent mounts, and reduces operational overhead. Other options either use incompatible protocols, lack durability, or are not designed for shared POSIX file access.

Answer

Amazon S3 mounted as a file system using s3fs on each application server.

Answer

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server with Multi-AZ deployment.

Answer

Amazon FSx for Lustre with a scratch file system linked to an S3 bucket.

Question 3

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS and uses an Amazon RDS for SQL Server database for the SAP database. The operations team needs to perform a minor version upgrade of the SQL Server database with minimal downtime. The database is configured with Multi-AZ. Which action should they take?

Accepted Answer

Modify the RDS instance to apply the minor version upgrade during the next maintenance window, which will automatically fail over to the standby.. For an RDS for SQL Server Multi-AZ deployment, minor version upgrades can be applied with minimal downtime by modifying the instance and scheduling the upgrade. RDS upgrades the standby first, then fails over, resulting in only a brief interruption. This is the standard, supported method for minor version upgrades.

Answer

Manually apply the SQL Server service pack on the underlying EC2 instance that hosts the RDS database.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate the database to a new RDS instance with the upgraded minor version.

Answer

Take a snapshot of the RDS instance, restore it to a new instance with the new minor version, and then update the SAP application to point to the new endpoint.

Question 4

A company is deploying a new SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The SAP HANA database will run on an EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes. The company wants to ensure that the storage configuration provides the required IOPS and throughput for the HANA database, and that it follows SAP and AWS best practices. Which EBS volume type should be used for the HANA data and log volumes?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes. For SAP HANA on AWS, the storage must deliver high IOPS and low latency. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes are specifically designed for such demanding workloads and are SAP-certified. They provide the necessary performance and durability, making them the correct choice for HANA data and log volumes. The other volume types are either general-purpose or HDD-based and cannot meet the performance requirements.

Answer

Amazon EBS st1 volumes

Answer

Amazon EBS sc1 volumes

Answer

Amazon EBS gp2 volumes

Question 5

A company runs SAP HANA on a single EC2 instance with 4 TB of memory. The operations team needs to perform an operating system patch that requires a reboot. They want to minimize downtime and ensure the HANA database is gracefully stopped and started. Which sequence of actions should they take?

Accepted Answer

Stop the HANA database, stop the EC2 instance, apply the patch, start the instance, start the HANA database. The correct sequence involves gracefully stopping the SAP HANA database before stopping the EC2 instance, then applying the patch, starting the instance, and finally starting the database. This ensures data integrity and minimizes downtime by avoiding an unclean shutdown.

Answer

Stop the EC2 instance, apply the patch, start the instance, and let HANA start automatically

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager to apply the patch and reboot automatically without manual HANA shutdown

Answer

Apply the patch while the instance is running, then reboot the instance

Question 6

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a single HANA database on an r5.12xlarge EC2 instance. The SAP application servers are on separate EC2 instances. The company needs to ensure that the HANA database and the application servers can communicate with minimal latency and that the network performance is predictable. Which AWS networking design should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

Place all instances in the same VPC and same subnet, and enable enhanced networking with Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on all instances.. For SAP HANA on AWS, network latency between the database and application servers must be minimized. Keeping all instances in the same VPC and subnet reduces network hops, and enabling Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on all instances ensures high bandwidth and low latency. This combination provides predictable performance and is a best practice for SAP deployments on AWS.

Answer

Use AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and enable jumbo frames on all instances.

Answer

Use AWS Direct Connect to connect the HANA database and application servers, and enable ENA on all instances.

Answer

Deploy the HANA database in a separate VPC and use VPC peering with the application VPC, and enable ENA on the database instance only.

Question 7

A company runs SAP HANA on an EC2 instance with 2 TB of memory. The operations team must be able to recover the HANA database to any point within the last 15 minutes after a logical corruption, and the RPO must be 15 minutes. The current setup takes a full data backup nightly and does not back up HANA redo logs. What should be implemented to meet the RPO requirement?

Accepted Answer

Enable automatic log backup in SAP HANA so redo log segments are written to the backup destination, and use AWS Backint Agent or a supported S3 destination to store them.. Meeting a 15-minute RPO for logical corruption requires the HANA redo log chain, which only automatic log backup provides. Data backups alone restore only to their creation time. EBS snapshots are crash-consistent and lack log granularity, and system replication copies corruption rather than protecting against it. Combining data backups with continuous log backups to Amazon S3 via AWS Backint Agent or native integration satisfies the recovery objective.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA system replication to a secondary instance in another Availability Zone and rely on replication for recovery.

Answer

Enable EBS snapshots of the HANA data and log volumes every 15 minutes using a lifecycle policy.

Answer

Increase the frequency of full data backups to every 15 minutes using AWS Backup and retain 35 generations.

Question 8

A company is migrating a legacy SAP ERP system to AWS. The system currently runs on an unsupported operating system and database. The company wants to move to a supported platform on AWS with minimal effort. They plan to use SAP's Software Update Manager (SUM) with the Database Migration Option (DMO). Which AWS service should they use to host the target SAP system during the migration?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EC2 instances with SAP HANA. The target SAP system during a DMO migration must run on Amazon EC2 with SAP HANA, as SAP HANA on AWS is only supported on EC2. Amazon RDS does not offer SAP HANA, and Aurora PostgreSQL and Redshift are not supported for SAP ERP. Therefore, Amazon EC2 instances with SAP HANA is the correct choice to host the target system.

Answer

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL

Answer

Amazon Redshift

Answer

Amazon RDS for SAP HANA

Question 9

An SAP basis team runs a distributed SAP NetWeaver ABAP system on AWS with separate EC2 instances for the central services instance (ASCS), the database, and multiple application servers. The ASCS instance and the database instance must be started in a specific order whenever the landscape is powered on after a maintenance window. The team wants to orchestrate this startup sequence automatically and receive an alert if any step fails. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS Systems Manager Automation runbook that defines the ordered steps, invoke it with a schedule, and configure Amazon CloudWatch alarms on the automation execution status.. Ordered startup of a distributed SAP landscape requires a workflow engine that can execute steps sequentially, wait for completion, and surface failures. AWS Systems Manager Automation provides exactly this with runbooks, and it integrates with EventBridge for scheduling and CloudWatch or SNS for alerting. Instance-level primitives such as StartInstances or state-change events do not understand SAP service readiness and cannot enforce the database-before-ASCS dependency.

Answer

Configure an AWS Lambda function that calls the EC2 StartInstances API for all instances in a single call and rely on the EC2 service to order the starts.

Answer

Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that triggers on EC2 instance state-change notifications and starts the next instance when the previous one enters the running state.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a launch template for each instance and set the desired capacity to 1 for all groups at the same time.

Question 10

A company is deploying SAP HANA on AWS and must select an EBS volume configuration for the /hana/data and /hana/log file systems on an r5.12xlarge instance. The workload requires the highest possible IOPS for the log volume with a predictable latency below 1 millisecond. Which volume type should be used for /hana/log?

Accepted Answer

io2 Block Express volumes with the maximum provisioned IOPS and an appropriate size to reach the required IOPS-to-GiB ratio.. The HANA log file system is extremely latency-sensitive because every committed transaction must be persisted to the redo log before the commit is acknowledged. io2 Block Express volumes provide the high provisioned IOPS and consistently low latency required, and they allow the IOPS-to-GiB ratio to be tuned to the workload. General-purpose SSD and magnetic volume types cannot guarantee the sub-millisecond latency the scenario demands.

Answer

sc1 cold HDD volumes with a large capacity to absorb the log write bursts during peak transaction periods.

Answer

gp3 volumes with the maximum provisioned IOPS and throughput settings above the baseline, sized to the minimum supported by SAP.

Answer

st1 throughput-optimized HDD volumes sized large enough to achieve the required throughput for the log writes.

Question 11

A company is migrating a SAP S/4HANA system to AWS. The system uses SAP HANA as the database. The migration team plans to use SAP HANA system replication to minimize downtime. They have set up the primary HANA instance on an Amazon EC2 instance in Availability Zone A and want to configure a secondary instance in Availability Zone B for high availability. Which network configuration is required to support SAP HANA system replication between the two Availability Zones?

Accepted Answer

Configure the instances in private subnets within the same VPC and allow traffic on the HANA system replication ports between the subnets.. SAP HANA system replication between Availability Zones requires network connectivity on specific ports. The instances should reside in private subnets within the same VPC, and security groups must allow the replication traffic. This configuration provides low latency and high availability without exposing the database to the internet.

Answer

Place both instances in the same subnet and use a placement group.

Answer

Use an AWS Direct Connect connection between the two Availability Zones.

Answer

Use a VPC peering connection between two VPCs in different regions.

Question 12

A company is migrating its SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) system to AWS. The system runs on SAP HANA and is critical for business operations. The migration must ensure high availability and disaster recovery. The company plans to use multiple Availability Zones. Which TWO configurations should be implemented to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP HANA with system replication to a secondary Availability Zone, and configure automatic failover using an overlay IP address.. The two correct configurations are HANA system replication across AZs with an overlay IP for automatic failover, and WSFC for ASCS/ERS across AZs with a shared file system. These provide high availability and disaster recovery for both the database and the central services. Other options either do not provide cross-AZ failover or are incomplete.

Answer

Deploy all SAP application servers in a single Availability Zone to reduce latency, and use Amazon Route 53 health checks for failover to a secondary region.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA high availability using a standby HANA instance in the same Availability Zone, with automatic restart on failure.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 for SAP HANA data and log backups, and configure cross-region replication for disaster recovery.

Question 13

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and uses AWS Backint Agent for SAP HANA to back up the database to Amazon S3. The operations team notices that backups are taking longer than expected and sometimes fail due to network timeouts. The HANA database is running on an Amazon EC2 instance in a private subnet. Which action should the team take to improve backup performance and reliability?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Amazon S3 gateway endpoint and update the route table for the private subnet to use the endpoint. Using an Amazon S3 gateway endpoint allows instances in a private subnet to access S3 directly through the AWS private network, bypassing the NAT gateway and internet. This reduces latency, improves reliability, and avoids data transfer costs. For SAP HANA backups with AWS Backint Agent, this is a best practice to ensure efficient and consistent backup operations.

Answer

Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the S3 bucket used for backups

Answer

Attach an additional Elastic Network Interface (ENI) to the EC2 instance for backup traffic

Answer

Increase the size of the EC2 instance to a larger memory-optimized instance type

Question 14

A company is designing the network layout for a new SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The SAP application servers and the HANA database will run in separate subnets within the same VPC. The security team requires that all traffic between the application servers and the database be restricted to the SAP ports only, and that no traffic traverse the public internet. The company also wants to minimize operational overhead for the network ACLs. Which combination of design choices should the solutions architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Place the application and database subnets in the same VPC, attach a security group to the HANA instance that allows only the SAP ports from the application server security group, and use the default network ACL.. The cleanest design for east-west SAP traffic within a single VPC is to use security groups with security group referencing. A security group attached to the HANA instance can allow inbound traffic on the SAP ports only from the application server security group, which automatically follows instances as they scale. Because security groups are stateful, return traffic is allowed without extra rules. Keeping both tiers in the same VPC means traffic never leaves the AWS private network, and the default network ACL avoids the operational burden of maintaining stateless custom ACLs.

Answer

Place the application and database subnets in the same VPC and use AWS PrivateLink to expose the HANA database to the application servers.

Answer

Place the application and database subnets in separate VPCs, peer the VPCs, and create custom network ACLs on both sides that allow only the SAP ports.

Answer

Place the application and database subnets in the same VPC and configure a NAT gateway so that the database traffic is translated before reaching the HANA instance.

Question 15

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS with a scale-out configuration across multiple EC2 instances. The database is experiencing performance degradation during peak loads. Monitoring shows that the network throughput between the HANA nodes is a bottleneck. Which action should the administrator take to improve network performance for the scale-out HANA system?

Accepted Answer

Enable Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) on all HANA nodes and configure the cluster to use EFA for inter-node communication.. EFA is designed to provide high-throughput, low-latency networking for distributed workloads like SAP HANA scale-out. It bypasses the operating system network stack, reducing overhead. Other options either do not address network throughput or could worsen latency. Therefore, enabling EFA is the correct action.

Answer

Place all HANA nodes in a spread placement group to ensure they are on distinct hardware, reducing network contention.

Answer

Configure the HANA nodes to use Amazon FSx for Lustre for shared storage, which will offload network traffic from the inter-node network.

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS volumes attached to each HANA node to improve I/O throughput, which will alleviate the network bottleneck.

Question 16

A company is migrating its on-premises SAP NetWeaver ABAP system to AWS. The SAP Basis team wants to physically move the existing database files to Amazon EC2 rather than perform a logical export/import, because the source database is 4 TB and the change window is only 12 hours. The target system must retain the same SAP SID and database layout. Which migration approach should the team use?

Accepted Answer

Perform a homogeneous system copy using a backup and restore of the database, transferring the backup to Amazon S3 and restoring it on the target EC2 instance with the same SID.. A homogeneous system copy using a database backup and restore is the correct approach because it moves the same database platform physically, preserves the SAP SID and layout, and scales to a 4 TB database within a short window. Streaming the backup to Amazon S3 and restoring on the target EC2 instance minimizes transfer and downtime compared with logical export/import or replication tools that rewrite data.

Answer

Detach the EBS volumes from the on-premises database server and attach them directly to the target EC2 instance.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) with a full-load plus change-data-capture task to replicate the database into an EC2-hosted SAP-certified database.

Answer

Run SAP Software Provisioning Manager to perform a distributed system copy with a target database export, then import into the target EC2 instance.

Question 17

A company runs an SAP S/4HANA system on AWS with the database on an EC2 instance using SAP HANA. The business requires a recovery point objective of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective of 2 hours for the database. The team currently takes a daily SAP HANA full backup to Amazon S3. Which change should the company make to meet the RPO while keeping recovery within the RTO?

Accepted Answer

Enable SAP HANA automatic log backup to Amazon S3 and retain the daily full backup, then restore using the full backup plus replayed log backups.. SAP HANA automatic log backup continuously ships redo log entries to Amazon S3, enabling recovery to a point within the log backup interval and thus meeting a 15-minute RPO. Combining the daily full backup with replayed log backups restores the database to the desired point in time within the 2-hour RTO, unlike volume snapshots or infrequent full backups.

Answer

Increase the frequency of full SAP HANA backups to Amazon S3 from daily to every 15 minutes.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA system replication to a secondary EC2 instance in another Availability Zone and rely on it as the only recovery mechanism.

Answer

Create an Amazon EBS snapshot of the HANA data volume every 15 minutes and restore from the latest snapshot during a failure.

Question 18

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system uses an Oracle database and runs on AIX. The company wants to move to a Linux environment on AWS with SAP HANA as the database. They plan to use a big-bang cutover during a weekend. Which migration strategy should they use?

Accepted Answer

Re-platform by migrating to Linux on AWS and using SAP HANA, using SAP DMO to combine the OS/DB migration.. The re-platform strategy is appropriate because it involves migrating the SAP system to AWS while changing the operating system from AIX to Linux and the database from Oracle to SAP HANA. SAP DMO facilitates this by combining the OS/DB migration and SAP upgrade into a single process, reducing downtime and complexity. This aligns with the company's goal of a weekend cutover.

Answer

Refactor the SAP application to a microservices architecture on AWS.

Answer

Retain the SAP system on-premises and use AWS for backup and disaster recovery only.

Answer

Lift and shift the entire SAP system to AWS, keeping AIX and Oracle.

Question 19

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS and wants to optimize costs. The production system runs 24/7, but the development and test systems are only needed during business hours (8 AM to 6 PM, Monday to Friday). The company wants to automate the start and stop of these non-production systems to reduce costs. Which solution should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Instance Scheduler to automatically start and stop the EC2 instances based on a schedule.. AWS Instance Scheduler is a pre-built, serverless solution that automates the start and stop of EC2 instances based on schedules. It is designed for exactly this use case: reducing costs by running instances only during business hours. It uses tags to identify instances and supports complex schedules. Other options like cron jobs, Auto Scaling, or custom Lambda functions are either not fully automated, not suitable for stateful SAP systems, or require more effort to implement and maintain.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch Events to trigger an AWS Lambda function that stops and starts the instances based on a schedule.

Answer

Create a cron job on each EC2 instance to shut down the operating system at the end of the day and start it in the morning.

Answer

Use AWS Auto Scaling to scale the instances down to zero during off-hours and scale up during business hours.

Question 20

A company is migrating its SAP NetWeaver Java stack to AWS. The system uses an Oracle database on-premises. The company wants to migrate the database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. They need to minimize downtime during the migration. Which AWS service should they use to replicate data continuously from the on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle?

Accepted Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is designed to migrate databases to AWS with minimal downtime. It supports Oracle as both source and target, and can perform continuous replication using change data capture (CDC). This allows the on-premises database to remain operational while data is replicated to Amazon RDS for Oracle, and then a quick cutover can be performed. Other options do not support continuous database replication.

Answer

AWS DataSync

Answer

AWS Snowball Edge

Answer

Oracle Data Guard