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

Question 1

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS across three environments (dev, test, prod) in the same account. The operations team uses AWS Systems Manager Session Manager for administrative access to EC2 instances. A new security policy requires that all administrative sessions on production SAP instances be logged to an Amazon S3 bucket for auditing, while dev and test sessions do not need logging. Which configuration should be implemented to meet this requirement?

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

Accepted Answer

Create a separate AWS Systems Manager Session Manager preference for each environment, associating the production preference with an S3 bucket for session logging.. Session Manager preferences allow you to define session logging to S3 or CloudWatch Logs and apply them to specific instances using tags. By creating a preference for production instances and tagging them accordingly, you can log only production sessions to S3 while leaving dev and test unlogged. This is the simplest and most direct solution.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail data events for all EC2 instances and configure CloudTrail to deliver logs to an S3 bucket.

Answer

Attach an IAM policy to production instances that denies Session Manager access unless the session is logged to S3, and use AWS Config rules to enforce compliance.

Answer

Configure AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to log all sessions to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and use a CloudWatch Logs subscription filter to forward only production instance logs to S3.

Question 2

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS and manages its entire landscape with AWS Systems Manager. The operations team wants to apply a specific patch to all SAP application servers using a predefined runbook, but they need to ensure that the patch is applied only to instances tagged with Environment=Production. Which AWS Systems Manager feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Automation with a custom runbook that filters instances by tags. AWS Systems Manager Automation is designed to execute predefined or custom runbooks across a fleet of instances. By targeting instances with specific tags, such as Environment=Production, the team can ensure the patch is applied only to production SAP application servers. This provides controlled, auditable, and repeatable operations suitable for SAP environments on AWS.

Answer

AWS Systems Manager State Manager with an association that applies the patch

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager with a patch baseline that includes the specific patch

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows with a task that runs a custom script

Question 3

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS and wants to monitor the health and performance of its SAP HANA database. The operations team needs to collect SAP HANA metrics and logs and integrate them with Amazon CloudWatch for centralized monitoring. Which TWO actions should the team take to achieve this? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA's built-in monitoring views to push metrics to Amazon CloudWatch using the CloudWatch agent's StatsD plugin.. To monitor SAP HANA on AWS with CloudWatch, the team must collect both infrastructure and database-specific metrics. The CloudWatch agent on the instance gathers OS-level metrics and can also collect logs. Additionally, configuring SAP HANA to emit metrics via StatsD to the CloudWatch agent enables the collection of SAP HANA-specific performance data. These two actions together provide comprehensive monitoring.

Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to automatically parse SAP HANA trace files and extract performance metrics.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager to run the SAP HANA monitoring scripts and send metrics to CloudWatch.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail to capture SAP HANA database performance metrics.

Question 4

A company runs an SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP system on an Amazon EC2 instance in a private subnet. The SAP administrator recently deployed a new kernel patch, and now the SAP application server fails to start. The administrator needs to quickly restore the system to the pre-patch state. The EC2 instance has a root Amazon EBS volume and additional EBS volumes for /usr/sap and /hana. No recent AMI backup exists. What is the MOST operationally efficient way to revert the kernel patch?

Accepted Answer

Restore the root and /usr/sap EBS volumes from the most recent EBS snapshot, then restart the instance.. Restoring the affected EBS volumes from the latest snapshot is the most efficient way to revert the kernel patch because it returns the file system to a known good state without rebuilding the instance. The SAP kernel and related files are stored on the root and /usr/sap volumes, so restoring those volumes addresses the issue directly. This method minimizes downtime and preserves the instance configuration.

Answer

Detach the root EBS volume, attach it to another instance, and manually delete the patched files.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Run Command to execute a script that uninstalls the kernel patch.

Answer

Terminate the instance and launch a new instance from the latest AMI backup.

Question 5

A company runs an SAP NetWeaver application server on an Amazon EC2 instance. The operations team needs to receive an alert whenever the SAP application server process (disp+work) stops responding. The team wants to use an AWS native monitoring service without installing additional agents on the EC2 instance. Which solution should a SAP on AWS specialist recommend?

Accepted Answer

Configure the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instance to collect process metrics and set an alarm on the disp+work process.. The CloudWatch agent can be configured to monitor specific processes on an EC2 instance, including the SAP disp+work process. By collecting the procstat metric, you can create an alarm that triggers when the process is not running. This is an AWS native solution that integrates with CloudWatch for alerting. Although it requires the agent, it is the standard method for process-level monitoring in AWS and is widely used in SAP on AWS deployments.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) to run a PowerShell script that checks the disp+work process and publishes a custom metric to Amazon CloudWatch.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring for the EC2 instance and create a CloudWatch alarm on the CPU utilization metric.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to log API calls and create a CloudWatch alarm based on the absence of disp+work API calls.

Question 6

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a distributed architecture: a central services instance, multiple application servers, and an SAP HANA database. The operations team needs to implement a monitoring solution that provides real-time visibility into the SAP application servers and the HANA database, including custom metrics such as dialog response time and HANA memory usage. The solution must integrate with existing SAP tools and allow for automated alerts. Which TWO actions should the team take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the SAP application servers and configure it to collect custom metrics from SAP logs and performance counters.. The CloudWatch agent can be installed on both SAP application servers and the HANA database to collect custom metrics from logs, performance counters, and HANA monitoring views. These metrics are then available in CloudWatch for real-time dashboards and automated alarms. This approach integrates with existing SAP tools by leveraging standard SAP monitoring interfaces.

Answer

Use Amazon Managed Grafana with the SAP HANA data source plugin to visualize metrics and set alerts.

Answer

Use SAP Solution Manager with the AWS Management Pack to monitor both SAP and AWS resources.

Answer

Deploy AWS X-Ray on the SAP application servers to trace SAP GUI requests and identify performance bottlenecks.

Question 7

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS and uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to multiple SAP application servers. The operations team notices that during peak hours, some application servers receive more traffic than others, causing performance degradation. They want to ensure even distribution of traffic across all healthy application servers. Which action should they take?

Accepted Answer

Configure the ALB to use the least outstanding requests routing algorithm.. The least outstanding requests routing algorithm is designed to distribute requests based on the current load of each target, making it ideal for scenarios where request processing times vary and some servers may be slower. By routing to the target with the fewest in-flight requests, it helps balance the load more effectively than round robin. The other options either enforce session affinity, adjust timeouts, or affect zone-level distribution, none of which directly address uneven load among healthy targets.

Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB target group.

Answer

Increase the idle timeout of the ALB to 3600 seconds.

Answer

Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.

Question 8

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS and wants to implement a robust monitoring solution. The operations team needs to collect and analyze SAP HANA database metrics and also monitor the underlying EC2 instances for CPU and memory utilization. They want to use AWS native services and minimize custom code. Which TWO actions should they take to achieve this? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Install and configure the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instances to collect memory and disk metrics. To monitor SAP HANA database metrics and EC2 system metrics using AWS native services, the team should install the CloudWatch agent for system-level metrics and use the SAP HANA CloudWatch integration (often via Lambda) for database-level metrics. These actions provide comprehensive monitoring with minimal custom code.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to capture SAP HANA database performance metrics

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter to automatically collect SAP HANA database metrics

Answer

Deploy Amazon Inspector to monitor SAP HANA database performance

Question 9

A company runs SAP HANA on an Amazon EC2 X1e instance with 4 TB of memory. The database is critical, and the operations team needs to ensure that the HANA database can be recovered quickly in the event of an AZ failure. The RTO is 15 minutes, and the RPO is 5 minutes. The company wants to use AWS native services and minimize manual intervention. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Implement HANA System Replication (HSR) with a Pacemaker cluster across two Availability Zones, using an Amazon EC2 overlay IP address for automatic failover.. The combination of HANA System Replication with a Pacemaker cluster across Availability Zones is the SAP-certified high availability solution on AWS. It provides automatic failover, ensuring the RTO is met, and synchronous replication ensures the RPO is met. The overlay IP address allows clients to reconnect to the new primary without manual reconfiguration. This solution is fully automated and uses AWS native services like EC2 and networking, with no manual intervention required.

Answer

Configure HANA System Replication (HSR) between two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones, with an overlay IP address managed by Amazon Route 53 health checks.

Answer

Configure asynchronous HANA System Replication to a secondary instance in another AZ and use Amazon CloudWatch alarms to trigger an AWS Lambda function that promotes the secondary.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) to replicate the HANA database to another AZ and automate recovery with AWS Lambda.

Question 10

A company runs SAP HANA on an Amazon EC2 X1 instance with 1 TB of memory. The database is critical, and the operations team needs to monitor memory usage and receive alerts when free memory drops below 10%. The team wants to use AWS-native services and avoid installing third-party agents. Which solution should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch agent to collect SAP HANA memory metrics and create a CloudWatch alarm that triggers when the metric breaches the threshold.. The CloudWatch agent can collect custom metrics from SAP HANA, including memory usage, by querying SAP HANA monitoring views. These metrics are published to CloudWatch, where alarms can be set. This solution uses AWS-native services and avoids third-party agents, meeting the requirement with minimal overhead.

Answer

Configure AWS Trusted Advisor to check for low memory on the EC2 instance and send notifications via Amazon SNS.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter to monitor SAP HANA memory and automatically create an OpsItem when the threshold is breached.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring for the EC2 instance and create a CloudWatch alarm on the CPU utilization metric to indirectly detect memory pressure.

Question 11

A company runs SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) on AWS with an Oracle database on Amazon EC2. The database uses Amazon EBS volumes with io1 volume type. The operations team notices that database performance degrades during peak load, and Amazon CloudWatch metrics show high volume queue length on the EBS volumes. The team wants to improve database performance without changing the instance type. Which TWO actions should the team take? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable EBS optimized instance support if not already enabled.. Increasing provisioned IOPS on io1 volumes and ensuring the instance is EBS optimized are direct, non-disruptive actions that improve I/O performance. High volume queue length indicates that the storage cannot keep up with demand, so provisioning more IOPS addresses the bottleneck. EBS optimization ensures dedicated bandwidth for storage, reducing contention. Together, these actions can alleviate performance degradation during peak load.

Answer

Change the volume type to st1 (Throughput Optimized HDD) to increase throughput.

Answer

Create a RAID 0 array using multiple io1 volumes to increase IOPS and throughput.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring for the EBS volumes in CloudWatch.

Question 12

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and uses AWS Backup to protect its EBS volumes. The backup policy requires that backups be retained for 7 years for compliance. The company wants to minimize backup storage costs while ensuring that backups can be restored quickly if needed. Which AWS Backup configuration should be used?

Accepted Answer

Create a backup plan that transitions backups to cold storage after 30 days and expires them after 7 years.. AWS Backup lifecycle policies allow transitioning backups to cold storage after a specified period, which reduces storage costs for long-term retention. Transitioning after 30 days is a common best practice to balance immediate restore needs with cost savings. Retaining for 7 years meets compliance. Other options either keep backups in expensive storage or add unnecessary costs.

Answer

Create a backup plan that retains backups in the standard storage tier for 7 years without transitioning to cold storage.

Answer

Create a backup plan that transitions backups to cold storage immediately after creation and expires them after 7 years.

Answer

Create a backup plan that copies backups to a different region and retains them there for 7 years.

Question 13

A company runs a critical SAP ERP system on AWS with a large Oracle database on an Amazon EC2 instance. The database uses Amazon EBS volumes for storage. The operations team needs to take consistent backups of the database without impacting performance. They want to automate the backup process and retain backups for 30 days. Which solution should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup to create a backup plan that includes the EC2 instance and its EBS volumes, with a retention period of 30 days.. AWS Backup provides a centralized, automated solution for backing up EC2 instances and EBS volumes with configurable retention. When combined with SAP-certified backup scripts or Oracle RMAN integration, it ensures application-consistent backups. This meets the requirements for automation, consistency, and 30-day retention without manual intervention.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies to automatically delete backups after 30 days, and store Oracle RMAN backups in S3.

Answer

Create EBS snapshots manually using a cron job on the EC2 instance and set a lifecycle policy to delete after 30 days.

Answer

Configure AWS Storage Gateway to snapshot the EBS volumes and retain them for 30 days.

Question 14

A company runs a distributed SAP landscape on AWS, including SAP HANA databases and SAP application servers across multiple Availability Zones. The operations team needs to ensure that the SAP systems can be recovered in a different AWS Region in the event of a disaster. The recovery must be automated as much as possible and must maintain data consistency. Which TWO AWS services should be used together to achieve this? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication. AWS CloudFormation provides automated infrastructure provisioning in the DR Region, ensuring the SAP landscape can be recreated consistently. Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication ensures that SAP HANA backups stored in S3 are replicated to the DR Region, maintaining data availability and consistency. Together, they enable automated recovery of both compute and data. The other services either provide connectivity, DNS failover, or backup that may not be application-consistent for SAP HANA.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Backup

Question 15

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS and uses AWS Backint Agent for SAP HANA to back up the HANA database to Amazon S3. The operations team needs to ensure that backups are encrypted and that backup data is protected from accidental deletion. Which TWO actions should be taken to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable default encryption on the S3 bucket using AWS KMS-managed keys (SSE-KMS).. Enabling default encryption on the S3 bucket ensures that all backups are encrypted at rest using SSE-KMS, meeting the encryption requirement. Enabling S3 Versioning protects against accidental deletion by retaining previous versions of objects, allowing recovery if a backup is deleted or overwritten. Together, these actions provide the necessary security and protection for SAP HANA backups stored in S3 via AWS Backint Agent.

Answer

Configure AWS Backint Agent to use client-side encryption with a customer-provided key before uploading to S3.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 server access logs to monitor and alert on delete operations.

Answer

Enable S3 Object Lock in governance mode with a retention period.