PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 14 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and needs to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy. The DR site must have a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 30 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which two AWS services should be used together to achieve these objectives? (Choose TWO.)

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

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication. SAP HANA System Replication (option B) is correct because it is SAP's native replication mechanism that continuously ships redo log changes from the primary to a secondary HANA system, enabling an RPO of seconds to minutes (well within 15 minutes) and fast takeover that supports a 30-minute RTO. AWS CloudEndure Disaster Recovery (option C) is correct because it provides continuous block-level replication of the SAP HANA servers (including OS and application tiers) to a staging area in the DR Region, allowing automated recovery of the full stack within minutes, which complements HANA System Replication to meet the 30-minute RTO and 15-minute RPO. AWS Database Migration Service (option A) is not designed for continuous DR replication with sub-15-minute RPO for HANA; it is a migration/replication tool for database moves. Amazon S3 (option D) is object storage and cannot host or replicate a running SAP HANA instance for DR failover. Amazon EBS snapshots (option E) are point-in-time backups with recovery typically taking longer than 30 minutes and RPO tied to snapshot frequency, so they cannot guarantee the required objectives.

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots

Question 2

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting an issue where the SAP system is not responding. The administrator checks the AWS Management Console and finds that the EC2 instance status checks are failing. Which three actions should the administrator take to recover the instance? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Check the system logs for errors. Option B is correct because when EC2 instance status checks fail, the administrator should first check the system logs (via the AWS Console's Get System Log or Get Instance Screenshot) to identify errors such as kernel panics, boot failures, or filesystem corruption that explain why the instance is unresponsive. Option D is correct because rebooting the instance is a valid first recovery action for a failed status check; an instance reboot restarts the operating system and often clears transient issues without changing the underlying host or instance configuration. Option E is correct because stopping and starting the instance migrates it to a new host, which resolves failures tied to the underlying physical host or network, and it is the recommended recovery step when a reboot does not fix the failed status check. Option A is not appropriate because changing the instance type is a resizing operation, not a recovery action for failed status checks, and it requires the instance to be stopped first. Option C is not appropriate because attaching a new EBS volume does not address the cause of failed status checks and would not restore the instance's existing root or data volumes.

Answer

Change the instance type

Answer

Attach a new EBS volume

Question 3

A company is planning to run SAP HANA on AWS. Which three are best practices for configuring the EC2 instance for SAP HANA? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Enable CPU hyper-threading. Option A is correct because SAP HANA is certified on AWS EC2 instances with CPU hyper-threading enabled, which allows HANA to use the additional logical vCPUs and is required to meet SAP's performance and licensing expectations for the certified instance sizes. Option C is correct because EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated bandwidth to Amazon EBS, ensuring consistent, low-latency storage throughput that SAP HANA's in-memory persistence and log writes depend on. Option E is correct because cluster placement groups pack HANA instances closely within a single Availability Zone, reducing network latency for scale-out and replication traffic between HANA nodes. Option B is not appropriate because burstable T2/T3 instances offer variable CPU performance and are not SAP-certified for HANA production workloads. Option D is not appropriate because SAP HANA requires sufficient RAM to hold the entire database in memory, and relying on swap space is explicitly discouraged as it degrades performance and violates HANA sizing best practices.

Answer

Use burstable instance types (T2/T3)

Answer

Allocate swap space on the instance

Question 4

An SAP administrator attaches this IAM policy to a user. The user is unable to start an EC2 instance with ID i-0abcdef1234567890. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The IAM policy is applied to a user who is working in a different AWS region than the one specified in the resource ARN.. The most likely cause is a region mismatch: the resource ARN in the IAM policy specifies a particular region, and if the user is operating in a different region, the ARN will not match and the action will be denied. IAM policies are evaluated against the exact resource ARN, including region, so a policy scoped to one region does not apply in another.

Answer

The IAM policy does not include the ec2:RebootInstances action.

Answer

The IAM policy does not include the ec2:DescribeInstances action.

Answer

The IAM policy does not include the ec2:StartInstances action.

Question 5

A company runs an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance with EBS volumes. The operations team needs to ensure that snapshots of the database volumes are consistent. Which step should be taken before initiating the EBS snapshot?

Accepted Answer

Use hdbsql to execute BACKUP DATA FULL USING FILE ('/backup/snapshot_prep'). For HANA on EC2 with EBS, the correct pre-snapshot step is to put the database into a consistent state by executing a HANA backup command that flushes and quiesces the database, such as BACKUP DATA FULL USING FILE, which ensures all in-memory data is persisted to disk before the EBS snapshot is taken. This produces an application-consistent snapshot rather than a crash-consistent one.

Answer

Run the Linux 'sync' command on the instance

Answer

Stop the HANA database service

Answer

Create the EBS snapshot directly without any preparation

Question 6

An SAP system uses a shared file system mounted via EFS from multiple EC2 instances. The operations team notices that the file system is not performing well during peak loads. What is the most effective way to improve throughput without changing the application?

Accepted Answer

Change the EFS performance mode from General Purpose to Max I/O. Changing the EFS performance mode from General Purpose to Max I/O increases throughput for parallel workloads, improving performance without modifying the application. Option A (Provisioned Throughput) provides consistent throughput but does not change performance mode. Option B (EBS Multi-Attach) is not suitable for high-throughput shared file systems due to limited concurrent access and throughput constraints. Option C (FSx for Lustre) is designed for HPC and not typically aligned with SAP shared storage requirements.

Answer

Enable Provisioned Throughput on the EFS file system

Answer

Replace EFS with an EBS Multi-Attach volume

Answer

Migrate the file system to Amazon FSx for Lustre

Question 7

A company has an SAP landscape with multiple instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The operations team needs to ensure that the ALB targets are deregistered before an instance is terminated during a patching activity. Which AWS service can automate this?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks. EC2 Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks allow you to pause an instance in the 'Terminating:Wait' state before it is terminated, giving you time to deregister it from the ALB target group and drain connections. This is the standard AWS mechanism to ensure graceful deregistration during patching or scale-in events.

Answer

AWS Systems Manager State Manager

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS Lambda

Question 8

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. SwapUsage is the CloudWatch metric that directly reports the amount of swap space being consumed on the EC2 instance. High swap usage on an SAP HANA host is a critical indicator that physical memory is insufficient and the OS is paging, which severely degrades HANA performance. Monitoring SwapUsage confirms the memory shortfall hypothesis.

Answer

NetworkOut

Answer

DiskWriteOps

Answer

MemoryUtilization

Question 9

Which TWO tasks require the use of AWS Systems Manager Session Manager? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Execute a one-time command on an EC2 instance interactively. Option B is correct because Session Manager allows you to start an interactive shell session on an EC2 instance and run commands directly, including one-time interactive commands, without opening inbound ports or managing SSH keys. Option C is correct because Session Manager provides secure shell access to EC2 instances through the Systems Manager agent and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, eliminating the need for SSH keys or bastion hosts. Option A is incorrect because transferring files between on-premises and AWS is typically handled by AWS DataSync, AWS Transfer Family, or S3 tools, not Session Manager. Option D is incorrect because storing database connection strings securely is done with AWS Secrets Manager or Systems Manager Parameter Store (SecureString), not Session Manager sessions. Option E is incorrect because applying OS patches to a fleet is performed by Systems Manager Patch Manager, a separate capability from Session Manager.

Answer

Transfer files between on-premises and AWS

Answer

Store database connection strings securely

Answer

Apply operating system patches to a fleet of EC2 instances

Question 10

An SAP system on AWS experiences performance degradation during peak hours. Monitoring shows high CPU utilization on the application server EC2 instances. The instances are in an Auto Scaling group with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Despite scaling, performance does not improve. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The step scaling policy has a cooldown period that prevents immediate scaling.. The step scaling policy's cooldown period prevents immediate scaling. After a scaling activity, the cooldown period blocks additional scaling actions until it expires, so during rapidly rising peak-hour load the group cannot add capacity fast enough and CPU stays high. This matches the symptom that scaling occurs but performance still does not improve. Option A is unlikely because the issue is CPU, not memory, and SAP-certified instance types are typically chosen. Option B is not the most likely cause because if the alarm were not triggering the policy, no scaling would occur at all. Option D is irrelevant because an ELB is not required for an Auto Scaling group to scale on CPU utilization.

Answer

The selected EC2 instance types lack sufficient memory for SAP applications.

Answer

The CloudWatch alarm is not configured to trigger the scaling policy.

Answer

The Auto Scaling group is not associated with an Elastic Load Balancer.

Question 11

An SAP system experiences an unplanned failover of the HANA database. The database administrator needs to investigate the root cause. Which AWS service should be used to analyze the timeline of events leading to the failover?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail records API activity across AWS services, including EC2 instance state changes, EBS volume events, and SAP-specific automation actions (e.g., Lambda-triggered failover scripts). When an unplanned HANA failover occurs, CloudTrail provides the chronological timeline of API calls that preceded it — such as a StopInstances, a failed DescribeInstances health check, or an Auto Scaling action — allowing the DBA to reconstruct the sequence of events.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Answer

Amazon VPC Flow Logs

Answer

AWS Config

Question 12

A company uses SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a multi-AZ deployment. During a quarterly maintenance, the administrator needs to update the kernel of the primary application server without downtime. The application servers are behind an Application Load Balancer. What is the best strategy?

Accepted Answer

Deregister the instance from the target group, apply the patch, and re-register it.. Deregistering the instance from the ALB target group gracefully drains existing connections and stops new traffic from being routed to it, allowing the kernel patch to be applied while the other AZ instance continues serving requests, then re-registering restores it to service with no downtime. This rolling approach is the standard way to patch application servers behind an Application Load Balancer in a multi-AZ SAP S/4HANA deployment. Option B causes downtime because stopping the instance takes it out of service abruptly and it cannot serve requests during the patch. Option C is unsafe because patching a live in-service instance can disrupt active user sessions and the kernel update may require a restart. Option D is unnecessary and disruptive because it replaces the instance rather than performing an in-place kernel update, and terminating the old instance without draining connections can drop in-flight requests.

Answer

Stop the instance, apply the patch, and start the instance.

Answer

Apply the patch directly while the instance is in service.

Answer

Launch a new instance with the updated kernel and terminate the old one.

Question 13

An SAP administrator needs to monitor the disk I/O performance of an Aurora PostgreSQL database used by SAP. Which Amazon CloudWatch metric should be used to track read and write operations per second?

Accepted Answer

ReadIOPS and WriteIOPS. ReadIOPS and WriteIOPS metrics track the number of read and write operations per second. Option A (FreeableMemory) tracks available memory. Option B (CPUUtilization) tracks CPU usage. Option D (DatabaseConnections) tracks the number of connections.

Answer

FreeableMemory

Answer

CPUUtilization

Answer

DatabaseConnections

Question 14

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses AWS Backup to back up the SAP HANA database. The backup job fails with an error indicating insufficient IAM permissions. What is the most likely missing permission?

Accepted Answer

kms:Decrypt. AWS Backup requires permissions to decrypt the KMS key used to encrypt the SAP HANA database or its backup target. If the IAM role assigned to AWS Backup lacks the `kms:Decrypt` action for the specific KMS key, the backup job fails with an insufficient IAM permissions error. This is because AWS Backup must read the encrypted data before transferring it to the backup vault.

Answer

ec2:DescribeInstances

Answer

rds:CreateDBSnapshot

Answer

s3:PutObject

Question 15

An SAP system on AWS uses a shared file system via Amazon EFS mounted on multiple EC2 instances. Users report that file operations are slow. Which metric in Amazon CloudWatch should be analyzed to determine if the EFS file system's throughput is being throttled?

Accepted Answer

BurstCreditBalance. Amazon EFS uses a burst credit model for throughput. When the file system's burst credit balance is depleted, throughput is throttled to the baseline rate, causing slow file operations. Monitoring BurstCreditBalance in CloudWatch indicates if the file system is running out of burst credits and thus being throttled.

Answer

PercentIOLimit

Answer

DataReadIOBytes

Answer

MeteredIOBytes