PAS-C01 Mock Exam 76 — 25 Questions

Question 1

An SAP system running on AWS is experiencing high latency for database writes. The database is running on an RDS instance with General Purpose (gp2) storage. What change will PROVIDE the most immediate performance improvement?

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

Accepted Answer

Change the storage type to Provisioned IOPS (io1 or io2).. The SAP system is experiencing high latency for database writes, which is a latency-sensitive workload. General Purpose (gp2) storage provides a baseline of 3 IOPS per GB, but its burst model can lead to performance degradation under sustained high write loads. Changing to Provisioned IOPS (io1 or io2) guarantees consistent, low-latency I/O performance by allowing you to provision a specific number of IOPS independently of storage size, providing the most immediate performance improvement for write-heavy operations.

Answer

Add a read replica to offload read traffic.

Answer

Increase the allocated storage size to increase baseline IOPS.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ deployment.

Question 2

During an SAP migration, the team needs to transfer a large number of small files (SAP transport requests) from on-premises to AWS. Which AWS service is most cost-effective for this transfer?

Accepted Answer

AWS DataSync. AWS DataSync is optimized for efficiently transferring millions of small files, such as SAP transport requests, over the network, and is cost-effective for most data volumes without network constraints. It uses parallel threading and metadata handling to accelerate small-file transfers. In contrast, option D (AWS Snowcone) incurs shipping costs and device rental fees, making it less cost-effective for this type of transfer.

Answer

AWS Transfer Family (SFTP)

Answer

AWS Snowmobile

Answer

AWS Snowcone

Question 3

A company runs SAP on AWS with an SAP HANA database on an r5.8xlarge instance. The company notices high network latency between the SAP application servers and the HANA database. The application servers are in the same VPC but different subnets. Which design change would MOST effectively reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Launch the application servers and the HANA database in the same placement group.. Placing both the SAP application servers and the HANA database in the same cluster placement group ensures they are in close physical proximity within a single Availability Zone, minimizing network hops and reducing latency. Placement groups achieve this by co-locating instances on the same high-bandwidth, low-latency network fabric, which is critical for SAP HANA's real-time data processing requirements.

Answer

Create a VPC peering connection between the subnets of the application servers and the database.

Answer

Change the HANA database instance type to a compute-optimized instance such as c5.9xlarge.

Answer

Enable Enhanced Networking on the application servers by attaching an Elastic Network Adapter (ENA).

Question 4

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system has strict high availability requirements with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The SAP application and database (SAP HANA) must be in the same AWS Region but can be in different Availability Zones. Which architecture should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP HANA in a Multi-AZ cluster using synchronous replication across two Availability Zones, with the SAP application servers in an Auto Scaling group across the same AZs.. It uses synchronous replication for SAP HANA across two Availability Zones, which ensures zero data loss and meets the RPO of 15 minutes. The Multi-AZ cluster with automatic failover achieves the RTO of 2 hours, while the SAP application servers in an Auto Scaling group across the same AZs provide high availability and load balancing. This architecture aligns with AWS best practices for SAP HANA HA, leveraging HANA System Replication (HSR) in sync mode.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA in a single Availability Zone with asynchronous replication to a secondary instance in another AZ, and use manual failover.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA on a single EC2 instance with EBS snapshots every 5 minutes, and use a secondary instance in another AZ with snapshots restored.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA on a single EC2 instance with hourly backups to Amazon S3 and a script to restore the backup on a new instance in a different AZ.

Question 5

A company is planning to run SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the SAP system is backed up according to best practices. Which backup strategy is recommended?

Accepted Answer

Use EBS snapshots after quiescing the SAP system, combined with database backups to S3.. For SAP S/4HANA on AWS, the recommended backup strategy combines EBS snapshots taken after quiescing the SAP system (to ensure file system consistency) with database backups to Amazon S3. Quiescing the application ensures that all pending I/O operations are flushed and the file system is in a consistent state, preventing data corruption. Database backups to S3 provide a separate, application-consistent recovery point that can be used for point-in-time recovery, which is critical for SAP systems.

Answer

Use EBS snapshots of the data volumes without quiescing the application.

Answer

Store backup files on instance store volumes for quick recovery.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take snapshots of the EC2 instance only.

Question 6

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The plan must have a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. Which solutions can meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA log shipping to Amazon S3 every 15 minutes and restore in another region. SAP HANA log shipping to Amazon S3 every 15 minutes can achieve an RPO of 15 minutes by shipping transaction logs at that interval. RTO of 2 hours is achievable if the restore process is automated and tested. Option E: SAP HANA system replication to a secondary region with automatic failover provides near-zero RPO (seconds) and RTO in minutes, clearly meeting the requirements. Option D is incorrect because EBS snapshots are asynchronous and not a replication mechanism; they may not guarantee an RPO of 15 minutes due to snapshot scheduling delays, and restore times can exceed 2 hours, especially for large databases.

Answer

Multi-AZ deployment of SAP HANA within the same region

Answer

Cross-Region Amazon S3 backup and restore using AWS Backup

Answer

Synchronous storage-level replication using EBS snapshots every 15 minutes and automated restore

Question 7

An operations team manages an SAP ERP system on AWS that uses a single EC2 instance for the SAP central services (SCS) and multiple instances for application servers. The system is running in a VPC with both public and private subnets. The team notices that the SCS instance is unreachable from the application servers after a maintenance window where network ACLs were updated. The application servers are in private subnets, and the SCS instance is in a public subnet. The team has verified that the security groups allow the required traffic. Which step should the team take to resolve the connectivity issue?

Accepted Answer

Review the network ACL rules for both the public and private subnets.. The issue is that after maintenance, network ACLs were updated, causing connectivity loss between the SCS instance (public subnet) and application servers (private subnets). Network ACLs are stateless and control traffic at the subnet level. Since security groups are already verified, the likely cause is the NACL rules. Option A is correct because reviewing NACL rules for both subnets will identify missing inbound/outbound rules. Option B is incorrect because route tables to the internet gateway affect internet-bound traffic, not internal VPC traffic. Option C is incorrect because Elastic IPs are for internet access, not internal connectivity. Option D is incorrect because security groups were confirmed to allow traffic, so the issue is at the NACL level.

Answer

Verify that the route tables have a route to the internet gateway.

Answer

Assign an Elastic IP to the SCS instance.

Answer

Check the security group rules on the application servers.

Question 8

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. Which TWO of the following are valid DR approaches? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure HANA System Replication to a secondary Region.. HANA System Replication (HSR) is a native SAP feature that asynchronously replicates the in-memory database to a secondary Region, enabling a full DR failover with minimal data loss. This approach is fully supported on AWS by deploying HANA instances in different Availability Zones or Regions, and it meets the RPO/RTO requirements for enterprise SAP HANA workloads.

Answer

Use S3 cross-Region replication (CRR) to copy HANA backups.

Answer

Use AWS Backup with cross-Region copy.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS cross-Region read replicas for HANA.

Question 9

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting why a user cannot stop a production EC2 instance. The IAM policy attached to the user is shown in the exhibit. Which action is likely causing the failure?

Accepted Answer

The instance does not have the tag Environment=production.. The IAM policy allows StopInstances only when the instance has the tag Environment=production. If the instance does not have this tag, the condition in the policy is not met, and the action is implicitly denied. Option B is not necessarily correct because there is no evidence of an explicit deny in another policy. Option C is incorrect because the policy does allow StopInstances with the condition. Option D is incorrect because the ec2:DescribeInstances action is not required to stop an instance.

Answer

There is an explicit deny statement in another policy.

Answer

The policy does not allow the StopInstances action.

Answer

The policy does not include ec2:DescribeInstances action.

Question 10

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and needs to choose a storage option for the SAP HANA database. Which AWS storage service is most suitable for SAP HANA data volumes?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes are the most suitable for SAP HANA data volumes because they provide the highest level of performance, durability, and consistency required for SAP HANA's demanding I/O workloads. io2 Block Express volumes offer up to 256,000 IOPS per volume and sub-millisecond latency, meeting SAP's certification requirements for production SAP HANA deployments on AWS. This storage type ensures the low-latency, high-throughput, and consistent performance that SAP HANA's in-memory database requires for its data and log volumes.

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EBS gp3 volumes

Answer

Amazon EFS

Question 11

A company is migrating an SAP HANA workload to Amazon EC2. Which configuration ensures data encryption at rest and in transit without performance degradation?

Accepted Answer

Enable Amazon EBS encryption with SSE-EBS for at-rest and enable in-transit encryption using TLS.. Amazon EBS encryption (SSE-EBS) provides at-rest encryption with minimal performance overhead (handled at the hypervisor layer with hardware acceleration), and TLS secures data in transit. Option A is incorrect because client-side encryption adds CPU overhead on the EC2 instance, potentially degrading SAP HANA performance. Option B is incorrect because VPC peering does not encrypt traffic in transit; TLS must be used. Option C is incorrect as it compromises security.

Answer

Use client-side encryption with AWS KMS for SAP HANA data files.

Answer

Use EBS encryption with AWS KMS for at-rest and VPC peering for in-transit.

Answer

Disable encryption to maximize performance; use security groups for isolation.

Question 12

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS. The system administrator notices that the SAP HANA database is frequently running out of memory, causing performance degradation. Which AWS service should the administrator use to set up memory usage alarms and automate scaling of the SAP HANA instance?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. AWS Systems Manager. To scale a single SAP HANA instance vertically, the administrator can use CloudWatch to monitor memory usage (via custom metrics) and trigger an alarm that invokes an AWS Systems Manager Automation document. The Automation document can execute the 'modify-instance-type' step to change the EC2 instance type to one with more memory. Option D (Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Auto Scaling) is incorrect because AWS Auto Scaling is designed for horizontal scaling (adding/removing instances) and does not natively support vertical scaling of a single instance. Option B (AWS Lambda) could be part of a custom solution but is not the primary service for setting up alarms and scaling; Lambda alone does not provide monitoring or scaling orchestration. Option A (Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling) also focuses on horizontal scaling and is not suitable for vertical scaling.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Auto Scaling

Question 13

A company needs to back up its SAP HANA database running on AWS. The backup must be stored in a durable and cost-effective manner. Which AWS service should the company use for long-term backup storage?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is the correct choice for long-term backup storage of SAP HANA databases on AWS because it offers 99.999999999% durability, is cost-effective with lifecycle policies to transition data to lower-cost tiers like S3 Glacier Deep Archive, and supports native integration with SAP HANA backup tools via the SAP HANA Backint agent for S3. This allows direct backup to S3 without intermediate storage, meeting both durability and cost requirements.

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots

Answer

Amazon Glacier

Answer

AWS Backup

Question 14

A company is migrating an SAP system to AWS and needs to ensure high availability for SAP Central Services (ASCS) and Enqueue Replication Server (ERS). Which architecture meets SAP's high availability requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use a cluster solution with a shared file system and a virtual IP address in a multi-AZ setup. A cluster solution with a shared file system and a virtual IP address in a multi-AZ setup meets SAP's high availability requirements for ASCS and ERS. This architecture ensures automatic failover across Availability Zones (AZs) and is the standard recommendation for SAP HA. Option B is incorrect because deploying ASCS and ERS in a single AZ with automatic restart does not protect against AZ failure. Option C is incorrect because an Application Load Balancer is designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic, not for SAP Central Services which require a shared file system and virtual IP. Option D is incorrect because Amazon Route 53 health checks alone do not provide the fast failover required; they are typically used with DNS-based failover, not cluster-based HA.

Answer

Deploy ASCS and ERS in a single Availability Zone with an automatic restart

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic between ASCS and ERS

Answer

Configure Amazon Route 53 health checks to failover between ASCS and ERS

Question 15

An SAP administrator is trying to run an AWS DMS replication task from an EC2 instance that has this IAM role. The task fails with an access denied error. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The policy does not include permissions for dms:DescribeReplicationTasks.. The IAM policy attached to the EC2 instance role does not include permissions for the dms:DescribeReplicationTasks action. When the DMS replication task is started, the DMS service needs to describe the task status and list replication tasks, which requires this action. Without it, the API call fails with an access denied error. Although the policy includes dms:CreateReplicationTask and dms:StartReplicationTask, the absence of dms:DescribeReplicationTasks causes the failure. Option D correctly identifies this missing permission.

Answer

The EC2 instance role is not attached to the instance.

Answer

The S3 bucket name is incorrect.

Answer

The S3 actions require additional permissions for the bucket.

Question 16

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor the performance of an SAP HANA database on AWS? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch (option B) can monitor SAP HANA metrics such as CPU, memory, and disk I/O via custom metrics or the SAP HANA plugin. Amazon RDS Performance Insights (option D) provides database-specific performance metrics and SQL-level analysis when SAP HANA is deployed on Amazon RDS. Option A is incorrect because AWS Trusted Advisor offers best-practice checks, not real-time performance monitoring. Option C is wrong because AWS X-Ray traces application requests, not database performance. Option E is wrong because AWS Config audits configuration changes, not performance.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

AWS Config

Question 17

A company is migrating its SAP HANA database to AWS. They need to validate that the target AWS environment meets SAP's certification requirements. Which two steps should they take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Confirm that the operating system is SAP certified for HANA. To validate that the target AWS environment meets SAP HANA certification requirements, two key checks are necessary: (1) the EC2 instance type must be listed in the SAP HANA certified instance list (Option E), and (2) the operating system must be SAP certified for HANA (Option D). Option A (configuring 10 Gbps network bandwidth) is not a certification requirement; SAP HANA instances automatically use enhanced networking with adequate bandwidth. Option B (using an AMI from AWS Marketplace) is not required; you can install SAP HANA on any certified OS. Option C (ensuring EBS volumes are optimized for high throughput) is not a specific certification criterion; EBS optimization is automatically enabled on supported instance types.

Answer

Configure the instance with 10 Gbps network bandwidth

Answer

Use an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from the AWS Marketplace that includes SAP HANA

Answer

Ensure that the EBS volumes are optimized for high throughput

Question 18

A company is migrating a 10 TB SQL Server database to Amazon RDS for SQL Server using AWS DMS. The migration is taking longer than expected. Which TWO actions can improve the migration speed? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable parallel loading by splitting tables into multiple tasks. Splitting tables into multiple DMS tasks enables parallel loading, which significantly reduces migration time by processing multiple tables concurrently. Option D is correct because increasing the DMS replication instance size provides more CPU and memory resources, allowing the instance to handle larger data volumes and higher throughput more efficiently.

Answer

Use a single DMS task with full LOB mode

Answer

Use S3 multipart upload for the data

Answer

Disable transaction logging on the source

Question 19

A company runs production workloads on AWS. The Security Team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets with server access logging enabled must have logs delivered to a centralized S3 bucket in a separate account. Which solution meets this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Configure the source bucket to deliver logs to the destination bucket. Attach a bucket policy on the destination bucket that grants the log delivery group (e.g., Amazon S3 Log Delivery) write permissions.. S3 server access logs can be delivered to a bucket in another account (cross-account) by configuring the source bucket's logging settings to point to the destination bucket, and the destination bucket must have a bucket policy that grants the S3 log delivery group write permissions. Option A is incorrect because bucket policies do not restrict log delivery to only the source account; cross-account delivery is supported. Option B is incorrect because S3 replication copies objects to another bucket after they are logged, but it does not deliver the server access logs themselves. Option C is incorrect because AWS CloudTrail logs API calls, not the server access logs that record requests made to S3 buckets.

Answer

Use S3 bucket policies to restrict log delivery to only the source account.

Answer

Use S3 replication rules to copy objects from source buckets to the centralized bucket.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail to log all S3 API calls and store logs in the centralized bucket.

Question 20

Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing an EC2 instance type for SAP HANA? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

The instance must have enough memory to fit the HANA database.. SAP HANA is an in-memory database that loads the entire dataset into RAM for processing. The EC2 instance must have sufficient memory to accommodate the HANA database size, including overhead for system tables and temporary data, as specified in the SAP HANA memory sizing guidelines.

Answer

The instance should have GPU accelerators for faster query processing.

Answer

The instance must have local instance store volumes for data persistence.