PAS-C01 Mock Exam 78 — 25 Questions

Question 1

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS with an RDS for SAP HANA database. The operations team needs to perform a minor version upgrade of the database. They want to minimize downtime and ensure that the upgrade can be rolled back if needed. What should they do?

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

Accepted Answer

Take a manual snapshot before the upgrade, then perform the upgrade.. Taking a manual snapshot before the upgrade provides a point-in-time backup that can be restored if the upgrade fails, enabling a rollback. RDS minor version upgrades are typically performed with minimal downtime (usually a few minutes). Option B is incorrect because enabling Multi-AZ does not provide a rollback mechanism; it only provides high availability during the upgrade. Option C is incorrect because the clone feature is specific to SAP HANA native tools, not RDS; RDS for SAP HANA does not support cloning for version upgrades. Option D is incorrect because creating a read replica does not facilitate rollback of the primary instance; read replicas are used for read scaling and cannot be used to revert an upgrade on the source.

Answer

Enable Multi-AZ, then perform the upgrade.

Answer

Use the clone feature of SAP HANA to create a copy.

Answer

Create a read replica, promote it after the upgrade.

Question 2

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS and uses multiple EBS volumes for data and log storage. The company wants to encrypt all data at rest. Which three steps are required to ensure encryption of all EBS volumes? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Use a custom AWS Key Management Service (KMS) key for encryption.. Using a custom AWS KMS key allows granular control over encryption of EBS volumes. Option D is correct because enabling EBS encryption by default ensures all new volumes are encrypted automatically. Option E is correct because for existing unencrypted volumes, you must create an encrypted snapshot and restore from it to encrypt the volume. Option B is incorrect because you cannot enable encryption on a snapshot after creation; encryption must be set when creating the snapshot copy. Option C is incorrect because the EBS-optimized attribute relates to network performance, not encryption.

Answer

Enable encryption on the EBS snapshots after creation.

Answer

Launch EC2 instances with the EBS-optimized attribute set.

Question 3

An SAP administrator needs to migrate an on-premises SAP HANA system to AWS. The total size of the HANA data and log volumes is 5 TB. The administrator wants to minimize downtime and use the fastest possible initial data transfer method. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Snowball Edge to physically ship the data. AWS Snowball Edge provides a physical data transfer device that can be shipped to the on-premises site, loaded with the 5 TB of SAP HANA data and log volumes, and then shipped back to AWS for ingestion into an S3 bucket. This approach offers the fastest initial transfer for large datasets (multi-TB) over a WAN, as it bypasses network bandwidth limitations entirely, minimizing downtime compared to internet-based or dedicated network transfers.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration to upload the data over the internet

Answer

Use AWS Direct Connect to transfer the data over a dedicated network connection

Answer

Use VPC Peering to connect on-premises to AWS and copy data

Question 4

Which TWO configurations are required for a high-availability SAP HANA deployment on AWS using Pacemaker? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

STONITH fencing configured for the cluster nodes.. STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head) fencing is required in a Pacemaker cluster to ensure that a failed or unresponsive node is forcefully isolated before resources are failed over. Without STONITH, a split-brain scenario can occur where both nodes attempt to act as the primary, leading to data corruption. On AWS, STONITH is typically implemented using the AWS fence agent (fence_aws) which uses API calls to stop or reboot the instance.

Answer

Placement groups in separate Availability Zones for the cluster nodes.

Answer

EBS volumes with multi-attach enabled for shared storage.

Answer

An AWS Classic Load Balancer to route traffic to the active node.

Question 5

A company has an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance with 1.9 TB of memory. The database requires persistent storage. The solutions architect must choose a storage configuration that provides the highest IOPS and throughput while maintaining data durability. Which storage option should the architect choose?

Accepted Answer

Use multiple io2 EBS volumes with Block Express striped together using LVM.. It combines multiple io2 Block Express EBS volumes striped via LVM, which delivers the highest possible IOPS and throughput for SAP HANA on AWS. io2 Block Express volumes support up to 256,000 IOPS and 4,000 MB/s throughput per volume, and striping multiple volumes linearly scales these limits to meet the demands of a 1.9 TB memory HANA database. This configuration also ensures data durability through EBS replication within an Availability Zone, unlike instance store volumes.

Answer

Use a single io2 Block Express EBS volume of the required size.

Answer

Use multiple gp3 EBS volumes striped together with LVM.

Answer

Use NVMe instance store volumes for the HANA data and log areas.

Question 6

A company is running SAP HANA on an EC2 instance. The storage is provided by multiple EBS volumes. Which THREE considerations are important when configuring EBS volumes for SAP HANA? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Use RAID 0 striping across multiple EBS volumes to increase throughput.. Options A, C, and E are correct. Option A is correct because using RAID 0 striping across multiple EBS volumes increases aggregated throughput and IOPS, which benefits SAP HANA workloads. Option C is correct because separating data and log volumes prevents I/O contention and aligns with SAP best practices. Option E is correct because SAP HANA requires consistent, sufficient IOPS; provisioning volumes with adequate provisioned IOPS meets performance requirements. Option B is incorrect because gp2 burst credits are not reliable for production HANA; provisioned IOPS volumes (e.g., io1/io2) or gp3 are recommended. Option D is incorrect because EBS bursting introduces variability and is not suitable for production HANA; volumes should be sized for baseline performance.

Answer

Use gp2 volumes with burst credits to handle peak IOPS.

Answer

Enable EBS bursting for all volumes to ensure high throughput.

Question 7

An SAP HANA database on EC2 is experiencing high swap usage. The system administrator suspects that the memory configuration is insufficient. Which CloudWatch metric should be monitored to confirm this?

Accepted Answer

SwapUsage. High swap usage indicates memory pressure, and SwapUsage is a custom metric that can be monitored via the CloudWatch agent. It is not a default EC2 metric. Option A (NetworkOut) measures network traffic, not memory. Option B (DiskWriteOps) measures disk I/O, not memory. Option D (MemoryUtilization) is also a custom metric that measures memory usage, but swap usage directly indicates insufficient memory.

Answer

NetworkOut

Answer

DiskWriteOps

Answer

MemoryUtilization

Question 8

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.. SAP HANA requires consistent, high-throughput I/O for its data and log volumes. EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated network bandwidth to Amazon EBS, eliminating contention with other traffic and ensuring the low-latency, high-IOPS performance that HANA demands. Without this dedicated bandwidth, EBS performance can degrade under load, risking database stability.

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 9

A company wants to migrate its on-premises VMware virtual machines to AWS. They need to retain the current operating system and applications. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Server Migration Service (SMS). AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) is the correct choice because it is specifically designed to migrate on-premises VMware virtual machines to AWS while preserving the operating system, applications, and system configurations. It uses agentless replication via the VMware vCenter connector to create Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) from the source VMs, enabling a lift-and-shift migration without reinstallation or reconfiguration.

Answer

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN)

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

AWS DataSync

Question 10

You are an SAP Basis consultant for a company running SAP ECC on Oracle on AWS. The system is hosted on a single EC2 instance (r5.8xlarge) with a separate EC2 instance for the database (Oracle on RDS). Recently, users have reported that the system becomes unresponsive for a few minutes every day at 10:00 AM. You check CloudWatch metrics and see a spike in CPU utilization on the application server at that time, but the database metrics are normal. The application server is running SAP instance and also a custom batch job that runs daily at 10:00 AM. The batch job is using a significant amount of CPU. You need to resolve the issue without losing the functionality of the batch job. Which action should you take?

Accepted Answer

Move the custom batch job to a separate EC2 instance dedicated to running batch processes.. The correct answer. Moving the custom batch job to a separate EC2 instance isolates the CPU-intensive process from the main SAP application server, preventing it from impacting user sessions. This resolves the issue without losing batch job functionality. Option A (rescheduling) might avoid peak hours but does not address resource contention if the batch job overlaps with other activities. Option C (upgrading instance) is costly and may not be necessary. Option D (RDS read replica) only offloads database queries and does not address application server CPU spikes.

Answer

Reschedule the batch job to run at a different time, such as 2:00 AM.

Answer

Upgrade the application server instance to a larger size, such as r5.16xlarge.

Answer

Create an RDS read replica and offload the batch job's database queries to it.

Question 11

An SAP Basis administrator needs to monitor the performance of their SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. The administrator wants to visualize key metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O in a single dashboard. Which AWS service should be used to create this dashboard?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards. Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards is the correct service because it allows you to create custom, single-pane-of-glass views that aggregate metrics from multiple sources, including EC2 instances. For SAP HANA on EC2, you can pull CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O metrics from CloudWatch (enabled via the CloudWatch Agent or EC2 detailed monitoring) and display them together on one dashboard for real-time performance monitoring.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 12

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS. They want to implement automated backups for the SAP HANA database using AWS Backup. Which AWS service should they use to orchestrate the HANA backup?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. AWS Backup natively supports SAP HANA databases by integrating with the SAP HANA Backint agent, which allows you to define backup policies, retention rules, and cross-region copy directly from the AWS Backup console. This eliminates the need for custom scripting or manual orchestration, making it the correct service for automating HANA backups on AWS.

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager

Answer

AWS Systems Manager

Question 13

A company is planning to migrate its SAP HANA database to AWS. They require high availability with automatic failover in less than 30 seconds. Which AWS service should be used to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Route 53. Amazon Route 53 can be configured with health checks and DNS failover to automatically redirect traffic to a standby SAP HANA database in a different Availability Zone or region when the primary fails. With a low TTL (e.g., 5 seconds) and active-passive routing, failover can occur in under 30 seconds, meeting the high availability requirement.

Answer

Elastic Load Balancing

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Question 14

Which TWO of the following are best practices for running SAP HANA on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the HANA database in multiple Availability Zones for high availability.. Deploying the HANA database in multiple Availability Zones is a best practice for high availability because it protects against an entire AZ failure. SAP HANA supports system replication (HSR) in synchronous or synchronous-memory mode across AZs, enabling automatic failover with minimal data loss. This aligns with the AWS Well-Architected Framework's reliability pillar for critical SAP workloads.

Answer

Use RAID 0 across multiple EBS volumes to increase IOPS.

Answer

Store HANA data and log files on Amazon S3.

Answer

Use burstable instance types for cost savings.

Question 15

Which AWS service is used to automate the installation and configuration of SAP applications on AWS according to best practices?

Accepted Answer

AWS Launch Wizard for SAP. AWS Launch Wizard for SAP is the correct service because it provides a guided, best-practice-based deployment experience specifically for SAP applications. It automatically provisions the necessary AWS infrastructure (EC2, EBS, VPC, etc.) and configures the SAP software according to AWS and SAP validated architectures, reducing manual effort and errors.

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS Quick Starts

Question 16

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS and wants to ensure that their SAP system is backed up according to SAP best practices. Which backup method should they use for the SAP HANA database?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA Backint to Amazon S3. SAP HANA Backint to Amazon S3 is the correct backup method because it integrates directly with SAP HANA's native backup interface (Backint), allowing SAP to manage backup and restore operations natively. This approach supports SAP best practices for HANA database backups, including full, incremental, and differential backups, and leverages Amazon S3 for durable, scalable storage without requiring external scripting or manual snapshot coordination.

Answer

AWS Backup service

Answer

EBS snapshots of the data volumes

Answer

Amazon S3 replication

Question 17

An SAP administrator wants to attach the EBS volume shown above to two EC2 instances running SAP HANA in a scale-out configuration. What is the issue?

Accepted Answer

The volume is gp3 type, which does not support Multi-Attach.. The gp3 volume type does not support the Multi-Attach feature, which is required to attach a single EBS volume to multiple EC2 instances simultaneously. For SAP HANA scale-out configurations, shared storage is necessary for the /hana/shared file system, and Multi-Attach is only supported on io1 and io2 block express volumes. Therefore, using a gp3 volume prevents the multi-attach capability needed for this architecture.

Answer

The volume size is too small for HANA scale-out.

Answer

SAP HANA scale-out does not support shared volumes.

Answer

The volume IOPS is insufficient.

Question 18

An SAP system on AWS uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to multiple SAP Web Dispatchers. The system is experiencing intermittent session drops. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The ALB is not configured for sticky sessions.. The ALB operates at Layer 7 and, by default, distributes each request independently across healthy targets. SAP Web Dispatchers maintain user session state (e.g., logon tickets, application context) locally. Without sticky sessions (session affinity) enabled on the ALB, subsequent requests from the same user can be routed to a different Web Dispatcher, causing the new dispatcher to lack the session context and dropping the user's session. Enabling stickiness based on the ALB-generated cookie ensures all requests from a session are sent to the same Web Dispatcher, preventing these intermittent drops.

Answer

The ALB deletion protection is enabled.

Answer

The ALB health check interval is too short.

Answer

Cross-zone load balancing is not enabled on the ALB.

Question 19

An SAP system running on AWS experiences a significant performance degradation after a patching activity. The SAP application (PAS) and database (HANA) run on separate EC2 instances. The network throughput between the two instances has dropped. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The instances were moved out of a cluster placement group, reducing network throughput.. A cluster placement group provides low-latency, high-bandwidth network connectivity between instances by placing them in the same high-speed, non-blocking rack. Moving instances out of a cluster placement group removes this benefit, reducing network throughput between the SAP PAS and HANA instances, which directly causes performance degradation.

Answer

The EBS-optimization feature was disabled on the database instance.

Answer

The security group rules were modified during patching, restricting traffic.

Answer

The route tables were updated, causing traffic to traverse a NAT gateway.

Question 20

An SAP customer is using AWS KMS to encrypt EBS volumes for an SAP HANA database. The database administrator reports that the database is slow after enabling encryption. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The KMS API request rate limit is being exceeded, causing throttling.. When EBS volumes are encrypted, every I/O operation to the volume must call AWS KMS to decrypt the data key. If the database workload generates a high rate of these requests, it can exceed the KMS API request rate limit (default 5,500 requests per second per Region for symmetric keys), causing throttling and increased latency. This is the most likely cause of the observed slowdown after enabling encryption.

Answer

The KMS key is not rotated frequently enough.

Answer

The EBS volume is not using the correct instance type for encrypted volumes.

Answer

The KMS key is using a symmetric algorithm that degrades CPU performance.