PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 19 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs SAP S/4HANA in a multi-AZ deployment with a standby database in a different Availability Zone. The primary database fails. What is the expected behavior of the SAP HANA system replication?

Accepted Answer

The standby database automatically takes over as the new primary.. Option A is correct because with HANA system replication in sync mode, automatic failover to the standby occurs. Option B is wrong because manual intervention is not needed with sync replication. Option C is wrong because the standby is already in another AZ. Option D is wrong because replication is ongoing.

Answer

A new standby database is automatically provisioned in the same AZ.

Answer

The primary database is automatically restarted in the same AZ.

Answer

The administrator must manually promote the standby database.

Question 2

An SAP system administrator needs to apply an operating system patch to an Amazon EC2 instance running SAP NetWeaver. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group. What is the BEST approach to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Use a rolling update by updating the launch configuration and performing an instance refresh.. Option C is correct because an instance refresh in an Auto Scaling group allows you to apply a new launch configuration (which includes the patched AMI or user data) to all instances in a rolling, controlled manner. This minimizes downtime by replacing instances one at a time or in batches, ensuring the SAP NetWeaver application remains available throughout the process. Detaching, stopping, or terminating individual instances would cause unnecessary disruption or require manual reattachment, which is not optimal for high-availability SAP landscapes.

Answer

Detach the instance from the Auto Scaling group, apply the patch, and reattach.

Answer

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

Answer

Terminate the instance and let Auto Scaling launch a new one with the patch.

Question 3

A company uses AWS Systems Manager to automate patching of SAP EC2 instances. The patching fails for some instances with the error 'SSM Agent not running'. What should the administrator do to resolve this?

Accepted Answer

Verify that the SSM Agent is installed and running on the instances.. Option B is correct because SSM Agent must be running. Option A is wrong because CloudWatch Agent is unrelated. Option C is wrong because VPC endpoint is not needed if instances have internet access. Option D is wrong because restarting the instance may not fix the agent if it's not installed.

Answer

Reboot the instances.

Answer

Install the Amazon CloudWatch Agent on the instances.

Answer

Configure a VPC endpoint for Systems Manager.

Question 4

An SAP administrator notices that the /hana/data filesystem on an SAP HANA database is approaching 95% utilization. The HANA instance uses EBS gp3 volumes. What is the MOST efficient way to increase storage without downtime?

Accepted Answer

Modify the existing EBS volume to increase its size.. Option C is correct because EBS gp3 volumes support online resizing without downtime. You can increase the volume size while the instance is running, and then extend the filesystem and logical volume (if using LVM) to utilize the additional space. This avoids any disruption to the SAP HANA database.

Answer

Add a new EBS volume and extend the logical volume.

Answer

Migrate the database to a new instance with larger volumes.

Answer

Create a snapshot, create a larger volume, and restore.

Question 5

A company wants to ensure that its SAP systems on AWS are compliant with internal security policies. Which AWS service can be used to continuously monitor and evaluate resource configurations?

Accepted Answer

AWS Config. AWS Config is the correct service because it continuously monitors and evaluates the configurations of AWS resources against desired policies, such as internal security policies for SAP systems. It provides detailed configuration snapshots, compliance history, and automated remediation via AWS Config Rules, which can be custom or managed, to ensure ongoing compliance.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

Amazon GuardDuty

Question 6

Which TWO actions can be taken to improve the resilience of an SAP HANA database running on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use EBS snapshots for automated backup.. Option B is correct because EBS snapshots provide a reliable, automated backup mechanism for SAP HANA data volumes, enabling point-in-time recovery and disaster recovery without requiring additional SAP HANA-specific replication. These snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 and can be used to restore the database to a consistent state, improving resilience against data corruption or accidental deletion.

Answer

Deploy the application in a single Availability Zone.

Answer

Increase the CPU capacity of the database server.

Answer

Enable cross-region replication of the database.

Question 7

Which THREE metrics should be monitored in Amazon CloudWatch to proactively identify performance issues in an SAP NetWeaver application server? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

CPUUtilization. Options A, B, and D are correct. Option C is wrong because VPC Flow Logs are not CloudWatch metrics. Option E is wrong because S3 metrics are unrelated.

Answer

S3 request metrics

Answer

VPC Flow Logs

Question 8

Which TWO AWS services can be used to automate the patching of SAP EC2 instances? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows. Options A and B are correct. Option C is wrong because CloudFormation is for infrastructure provisioning. Option D is wrong because CodeDeploy is for application deployment. Option E is wrong because Inspector is for vulnerability scanning.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy

Question 9

A company runs a critical SAP application on AWS. The operations team needs to monitor the system for performance issues and receive alerts when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to set up this monitoring and alerting?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch can monitor CPU utilization and trigger alarms when a threshold is breached. CloudTrail is for API auditing, Config is for compliance, and AWS Health provides service health notifications.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Health

Question 10

An SAP system is running on AWS with a Multi-AZ RDS for SAP HANA database. The operations team notices that the database failover test takes longer than expected. What is the most likely cause of the prolonged failover time?

Accepted Answer

The application caches the DNS name of the database. Multi-AZ failover involves DNS propagation. If the application caches the DNS resolution, it may continue to point to the old primary, causing delays until the cache expires. Database instance size, storage type, and VPC configuration do not directly affect failover time.

Answer

The VPC does not have DNS resolution enabled

Answer

The RDS instance uses General Purpose SSD storage

Answer

The database instance size is too small

Question 11

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 operations team notices that some instances are failing health checks intermittently. The ALB health check is configured with a 5-second interval, 2 healthy threshold, and 5 unhealthy threshold. The instances are all in the same Auto Scaling group. What is the most likely cause of the intermittent health check failures?

Accepted Answer

The health check path returns a non-200 status periodically due to a short-lived issue. If the health check path returns a non-200 status due to a brief glitch (e.g., temporary resource exhaustion), the ALB will consider the instance unhealthy after 5 consecutive failures (25 seconds). The instances are not being replaced quickly because the Auto Scaling group health check type is likely not set to ELB, or the cooldown period delays replacement.

Answer

The Auto Scaling group health check grace period is too short

Answer

The ALB health check interval is too long

Answer

The health check path returns a 200 status only when the application is fully loaded

Question 12

An operations team needs to automate the patching of EC2 instances running SAP applications. The instances are part of an Auto Scaling group. The team wants to apply patches without causing downtime to the SAP system. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager with a maintenance window and configure the Auto Scaling group to perform a rolling update. Option C is correct because AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager can be integrated with an Auto Scaling group to perform a rolling update, which updates instances in batches, ensuring that the SAP application remains available throughout the patching process. This approach minimizes downtime by replacing or updating instances incrementally rather than all at once, which is critical for SAP systems that require high availability.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager with a maintenance window that patches all instances simultaneously

Answer

Use AWS CodeDeploy to deploy patches as a new application version

Answer

Use AWS OpsWorks to manage patching, configuring a rolling update

Question 13

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS using EC2 instances with HANA data replication between two Availability Zones. The operations team needs to test a disaster recovery failover. What is the correct procedure to promote the secondary HANA system to primary?

Accepted Answer

Use the HANA takeover command on the secondary system. For HANA system replication, the secondary must be taken over using HANA Studio or hdbsql. Stopping the primary or shutting down EC2 instances does not trigger a clean takeover; modifying DNS without promoting the database would cause data inconsistency.

Answer

Stop the primary HANA system on the primary EC2 instance

Answer

Modify the DNS record to point to the secondary instance

Answer

Shut down the primary EC2 instance and wait for automatic failover

Question 14

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing increased latency in database queries. The operations team suspects that the RDS for Oracle instance is hitting its maximum connections limit. Which CloudWatch metric should be monitored to confirm this?

Accepted Answer

DatabaseConnections. The DatabaseConnections metric in Amazon CloudWatch tracks the number of database sessions currently connected to the RDS for Oracle instance. When this metric approaches or reaches the value of the `max_connections` parameter (or the Oracle-specific `sessions` and `processes` limits), new connections are rejected, causing application-side latency as queries queue or fail. Monitoring this metric directly confirms whether the maximum connections limit is being hit.

Answer

CPUCreditBalance

Answer

SwapUsage

Answer

ReadIOPS

Question 15

An operations team needs to back up the SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. The database is 1 TB in size and the team wants to minimize backup time and cost. Which backup strategy should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup to create EBS snapshots of the attached EBS volumes. EBS snapshots provide point-in-time backups that are incremental after the first full snapshot, reducing backup time and cost. HANA Studio backup to S3 requires more manual steps and is slower. AWS Backup can be used but EBS snapshots are more direct. S3 lifecycle policies are for object management, not database backups.

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to back up the database to Amazon S3

Answer

Use Amazon S3 lifecycle policies to move old backups to Glacier

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager to run a script that copies data to S3