PAS-C01 Practice Exam 66 — 20 Questions

Question 1

Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing a migration strategy for a legacy application to AWS? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Total cost of ownership (TCO). Correct options: C, D, E. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a key factor in migration decision-making. Business continuity requirements (RTO/RPO) ensure the application meets recovery objectives. Data sensitivity and compliance requirements dictate how data is handled during and after migration. Option A (Physical location) is less relevant because cloud migrations are not bound by physical location; servers can be migrated regardless of location. Option B (Programming language) alone does not determine the migration strategy; the application's architecture and dependencies are more important.

Answer

Physical location of the source server

Answer

Programming language used

Question 2

A company is designing a multi-zone SAP system on AWS. They want to minimize network latency between SAP application servers and the SAP HANA database. What is the best practice for deploying these components?

Accepted Answer

Deploy application servers and HANA in the same AZ and same VPC.. Deploying both the SAP application servers and the SAP HANA database in the same Availability Zone (AZ) and the same VPC minimizes network latency because traffic stays within a single data center, using low-latency, high-bandwidth links. SAP HANA is latency-sensitive, and even single-digit millisecond increases can degrade performance; co-location in the same AZ ensures the lowest possible round-trip time (RTT) for SQL queries and data transfers.

Answer

Deploy in different VPCs and use VPC peering.

Answer

Deploy in different AWS Regions.

Answer

Deploy application servers in one AZ and HANA in another AZ.

Question 3

An SAP workload on AWS uses a single Availability Zone deployment. The company wants to improve high availability without changing the existing architecture significantly. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Add a second SAP application server in a different Availability Zone and configure load balancing.. Adding a second SAP application server in a different Availability Zone and configuring load balancing provides high availability by distributing traffic across multiple AZs, ensuring that if one AZ fails, the application remains accessible. This approach aligns with SAP's recommended architecture for multi-AZ deployments without requiring significant changes to the existing single-AZ setup, as it only adds an additional application tier instance and a load balancer.

Answer

Use an Amazon EBS volume attached to multiple instances across AZs.

Answer

Increase the size of the EC2 instances to handle failover.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach on the database volume.

Question 4

Which THREE actions should be taken to ensure a secure and compliant SAP environment on AWS? (Choose 3)

Accepted Answer

Restrict IAM permissions to only necessary actions. Options B, C, and D are correct. B: Restricting IAM permissions to only necessary actions follows the principle of least privilege, minimizing security risks. C: Security groups act as a virtual firewall to control inbound and outbound traffic, enhancing network security. D: Enabling encryption on EBS volumes and RDS instances protects data at rest, ensuring compliance with security standards. Option A is incorrect because placing SAP servers in a public subnet exposes them to the internet, increasing attack surface. Option E is incorrect because storing logs with public read access violates security best practices; logs should be private or accessed via controlled mechanisms.

Answer

Place all SAP servers in a public subnet for easy access

Answer

Store all application logs in Amazon S3 with public read access

Question 5

A company is migrating a SAP HANA database to AWS. Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing the EC2 instance type for SAP HANA?

Accepted Answer

The instance must be listed in the SAP HANA certified instance list.. Correct options: A, B, E. SAP HANA requires AWS certified instance types (A), enough memory to hold the database in RAM (B), and high network bandwidth for system replication (E). GPU is not required (C). EBS-optimized is not a selection factor; it is a feature that may be enabled on certain instance types but not a primary consideration for choosing the instance type (D).

Answer

The instance must have a GPU for accelerated processing.

Answer

The instance must be EBS-optimized by default.

Question 6

A company runs SAP on AWS with an Oracle database. They want to implement a disaster recovery strategy with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 2 hours. Which combination of AWS services should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for ongoing replication to a DR instance, and automated snapshots for fast recovery.. AWS DMS can perform ongoing replication from an Oracle source database to a target DR instance with minimal latency, enabling an RPO of less than 15 minutes. Automated snapshots of the DR instance allow fast recovery within the 2-hour RTO. This combination meets the stated RPO and RTO requirements without relying on Oracle-specific licensing or complex manual scripts.

Answer

Oracle Data Guard for replication and Amazon Route 53 for DNS failover.

Answer

Amazon S3 cross-region replication for database files and a script to import them.

Answer

AWS Backup to take weekly snapshots and restore in the DR region.

Question 7

Which TWO of the following are valid strategies for reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for SAP workloads on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Schedule start/stop of non-production instances using Instance Scheduler. AWS Instance Scheduler allows you to define start and stop schedules for non-production SAP instances, significantly reducing compute costs during off-hours. This is a direct TCO reduction strategy for SAP workloads, as non-production environments often run 24/7 unnecessarily.

Answer

Use GP2 EBS volumes instead of GP3

Answer

Use Graviton-based instances for SAP application servers

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA in Multi-AZ configuration

Question 8

A team is migrating an Oracle database to Amazon RDS for MySQL using AWS DMS with ongoing replication (CDC). The initial load succeeded, but the CDC task fails with the error shown in the exhibit. The source Oracle database is on-premises. Which action should the team take to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Connect to the source Oracle database and enable full supplemental logging by executing the command: ALTER DATABASE ADD SUPPLEMENTAL LOG DATA (ALL) COLUMNS;. AWS DMS requires full supplemental logging on the source Oracle database to capture all column values for CDC (ongoing replication). Without it, DMS cannot reconstruct the complete row changes from the redo logs, causing the CDC task to fail. Enabling full supplemental logging with `ALTER DATABASE ADD SUPPLEMENTAL LOG DATA (ALL) COLUMNS;` ensures that every column is logged, allowing DMS to replicate all changes correctly.

Answer

Configure binary logging on the target MySQL RDS instance.

Answer

Stop and restart the DMS task to clear the error.

Answer

Switch the target database to Amazon RDS for Oracle to maintain compatibility.

Question 9

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database size is 2 TB and the network bandwidth between the on-premises data center and AWS is 100 Mbps. The company needs to minimize the migration time and wants to use AWS DMS. Which approach should they take?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS DMS with AWS Snowball Edge for the full load, then ongoing replication.. AWS Snowball Edge can be used with AWS DMS to transfer the full load of large databases over a physical device, avoiding long upload times over limited bandwidth. After the full load, ongoing replication via DMS handles changes. Option A is incorrect because Direct Connect does not increase bandwidth beyond the 100 Mbps limit; it only provides a dedicated connection. Option B is incorrect because a full load over the network at 100 Mbps would take too long for 2 TB. Option D is incorrect because Schema Conversion Tool (SCT) is used for heterogeneous migrations (e.g., Oracle to PostgreSQL), but here the target is also Oracle (homogeneous), so SCT is unnecessary.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with AWS Direct Connect to increase bandwidth.

Answer

Use AWS DMS with a full load over the network, then ongoing replication.

Answer

Use AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT) to convert the schema and then AWS DMS for full load.

Question 10

An SAP administrator runs the above CLI command to find the public IP of an m5.2xlarge instance. The output is null. Which of the following is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The instance does not have a public IP address assigned. The CLI command `aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids <id> --query 'Reservations[0].Instances[0].PublicIpAddress'` returns null because the instance does not have a public IP address assigned. In AWS, a public IP is only assigned to an instance if it is launched in a subnet that auto-assigns public IPv4 addresses, or if an Elastic IP is attached. The command itself is syntactically correct and will output null (or an empty string) when no public IP exists, not an error.

Answer

The security group blocks the public IP

Answer

The CLI command has a syntax error

Answer

The instance type m5.2xlarge does not support public IP addresses

Question 11

A company is running SAP Business Suite on AWS. The SAP application servers are behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Users are experiencing session timeouts because the ALB is distributing requests to different application servers. What should the company configure on the ALB to maintain session stickiness?

Accepted Answer

Enable sticky sessions using the ALB-generated cookie.. Enabling sticky sessions (session affinity) on an Application Load Balancer using the ALB-generated cookie (AWSALB) ensures that all requests from a user session are routed to the same target (SAP application server). This prevents session timeouts caused by requests being distributed to different servers, which would lose in-memory session state. The ALB-generated cookie is the simplest and most appropriate method for SAP Business Suite, as it does not require custom application code.

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer instead of an Application Load Balancer.

Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.

Answer

Enable path-based routing to route all requests from a user to the same server.

Question 12

A company is designing a high-availability architecture for SAP NetWeaver on AWS. The architecture includes two application server instances in different Availability Zones, a shared file system using Amazon EFS, and a database using SAP HANA with HANA System Replication (HSR). During a failover test, the application servers cannot connect to the database after the HANA secondary becomes the primary. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The SAP application servers are configured with the hostname of the primary HANA instance, which did not update after failover.. In SAP NetWeaver, application servers connect to the database using a fixed hostname or virtual IP address. After HANA System Replication (HSR) failover, the secondary becomes the primary but retains its own hostname unless a virtual hostname (e.g., using Amazon Route 53 or Elastic IP) is configured to automatically update. If the application servers are hardcoded with the original primary's hostname, they cannot resolve or reach the new primary, causing connection failure.

Answer

HANA System Replication is not configured correctly for automatic failover.

Answer

The Amazon EFS file system is not available in the secondary Availability Zone.

Answer

The security group of the application servers does not allow outbound traffic to the secondary HANA instance.

Question 13

An SAP system is experiencing high CPU utilization on the application server. CloudWatch metrics show that the CPU credit balance for the T3 instance is frequently depleted. What is the most cost-effective solution to resolve this issue while maintaining performance?

Accepted Answer

Enable T3 unlimited on the instance.. Enabling T3 unlimited allows the instance to burst beyond its baseline CPU utilization by spending credits, and when credits are exhausted, it can still burst by incurring a small additional charge per vCPU-hour. This is the most cost-effective solution as it avoids the need to migrate to a larger or different instance type, while maintaining performance for the SAP system's variable workloads.

Answer

Add more vCPUs by changing to a C5 instance.

Answer

Change the instance type to M5.large.

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS volumes.

Question 14

A company is deploying a new SAP BusinessObjects system on AWS. The system will consist of multiple servers: a CMS database server, an audit database server, and several processing servers. The administrator needs to ensure that all servers can communicate with each other and with corporate on-premises systems via a VPN connection. The AWS environment is in a single VPC with public and private subnets. Which network architecture should be used to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Place servers in private subnets and use a NAT Gateway for outbound internet and a VPN gateway for on-premises connectivity.. Placing the SAP BusinessObjects servers in private subnets ensures they are not directly exposed to the internet, which is a security best practice. A NAT Gateway provides outbound internet access for tasks like software updates, while a VPN Gateway (or Virtual Private Gateway) establishes encrypted connectivity to the corporate on-premises systems, meeting the requirement for inter-server and hybrid communication.

Answer

Place all servers in public subnets with Elastic IPs and use security groups to restrict access.

Answer

Use a single public subnet for all servers and rely on network ACLs for isolation.

Answer

Place servers in private subnets and use a bastion host for all inter-server communication.

Question 15

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 ALB has a target group with health checks configured on port 8080. Recently, the operations team noticed that some instances are being deregistered due to health check failures. The instances are healthy and the Web Dispatcher is running. The health check response time is consistently below 2 seconds. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The health check interval is too short, causing the threshold to be exceeded.. A health check interval that is too short can cause the threshold to be exceeded even though the instances are healthy. If the interval is set very low, the ALB may send health checks more frequently than the instance can respond, leading to occasional timeouts or failures that accumulate and cross the unhealthy threshold. Option B is incorrect because the ALB health checks originate from the ALB's own subnet IPs, not from the internet, so a security group blocking internet traffic would not affect health checks. Option C is incorrect because memory exhaustion would typically cause application-level failures, not health check failures on port 8080 if Web Dispatcher is still running. Option D is incorrect because an incorrect health check path would cause all health checks to fail consistently, not just some instances intermittently.

Answer

The security group for the instances blocks inbound traffic from the internet.

Answer

The instances are running out of memory.

Answer

The health check path is incorrect.

Question 16

A company wants to centralize monitoring of EC2 instance metrics across multiple AWS accounts. Which solution is MOST scalable and cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Set up CloudWatch cross-account observability with a monitoring account.. CloudWatch cross-account observability (option D) is the most scalable and cost-effective solution for centralizing monitoring across multiple AWS accounts, as it allows a single monitoring account to aggregate metrics, logs, and traces from source accounts without manual logins or complex data pipelines. Option A, while not scalable for large environments, can be used for simple, ad-hoc checks in small setups; however, the question specifically asks for the MOST scalable and cost-effective approach, which is solely option D. The previous marking of option B as correct was in error; option B refers to cross-region metrics, which do not aggregate across accounts. Option C is inefficient and costly due to storage and query overhead.

Answer

Log in to each account and view CloudWatch metrics individually.

Answer

Use CloudWatch cross-region metrics to aggregate metrics in a single account.

Answer

Configure each account to publish metrics to an S3 bucket and use Athena to query.

Question 17

A company is deploying SAP Business Suite on AWS. They need to ensure that the SAP system can handle a sudden increase in user load without manual intervention. Which AWS service should be used to automatically scale the SAP application servers?

Accepted Answer

AWS Auto Scaling. AWS Auto Scaling is the correct service because it automatically adjusts the number of SAP application server instances based on demand, using scaling policies tied to metrics like CPU utilization or memory. This ensures the SAP system can handle sudden user load spikes without manual intervention, which is a core requirement for elastic SAP deployments on AWS.

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Amazon Elastic Container Service

Answer

Elastic Load Balancing

Question 18

A company runs SAP ERP on AWS. The system includes a primary application server and a secondary application server for high availability. The secondary server is not receiving updates from the primary. Which THREE steps should the administrator take to investigate?

Accepted Answer

Verify network connectivity between the primary and secondary servers using ping or telnet on SAP ports.. Options B, C, and D are correct. Verifying network connectivity between the primary and secondary servers (B) ensures that the servers can communicate. Reviewing the SAP message server trace logs (C) can reveal communication errors or replication issues. Checking the status of SAP enqueue replication using transaction SM51 (D) confirms whether locks are being replicated. Option A is incorrect because restarting the secondary server without investigation may disrupt operations and does not address the root cause. Option E is incorrect because checking the SAP Gateway service is not directly relevant to replication issues between application servers.

Answer

Restart the secondary application server to force a resync.

Answer

Check the SAP Gateway service status on the primary server.

Question 19

A company has a production AWS account that contains an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The database is critical and must have automated backups enabled with a retention period of 30 days. The company also requires point-in-time recovery to any second within the retention period. The operations team has configured automated backups with a retention period of 30 days, but they notice that the automated backups are not being taken consistently. The DB instance is in a Multi-AZ deployment and has a storage size of 500 GB. The team checks the backup window and finds that it is set to 02:00-03:00 UTC. The backup window is non-overlapping with the maintenance window. The DB instance is actively used during the backup window with heavy write traffic. Which of the following is the MOST likely reason for the inconsistent automated backups?

Accepted Answer

The heavy write traffic during the backup window causes I/O suspension and backup failures.. The heavy write traffic during the backup window causes I/O suspension, which can lead to backup failures. When an RDS for MySQL DB instance experiences high write activity during a backup, the backup process may be delayed or fail due to I/O suspension, especially if the instance is under heavy load. This is because automated backups require a consistent snapshot, and excessive write I/O can prevent the snapshot from completing within the backup window.

Answer

The storage size of 500 GB exceeds the maximum backup size limit.

Answer

The Multi-AZ deployment does not support automated backups.

Answer

The backup window overlaps with the maintenance window.

Question 20

A company is using AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. The development team wants to deploy a new version of a stack that updates an existing RDS DB instance's DB engine version. The update requires a replacement of the database. Which CloudFormation stack policy setting allows the update to proceed while preventing other resources from being replaced or updated?

Accepted Answer

Set a stack policy that allows updates to the specific RDS DB instance resource.. A stack policy in AWS CloudFormation can be set to explicitly allow updates to a specific resource (e.g., the RDS DB instance) while denying updates to all other resources by default. Since the update requires a replacement of the database, the policy must permit the update action on that exact resource logical ID, ensuring the DB engine version change proceeds without risking unintended modifications to other stack resources.

Answer

Set a stack policy that allows updates to RDS resources only.

Answer

Set a stack policy that denies all updates.

Answer

Set a stack policy that allows all updates.