PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 20 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses AWS Direct Connect for on-premises connectivity. The operations team notices that the SAP system is experiencing high latency when accessing an on-premises database. The network team confirms that the Direct Connect link is not saturated. What is the most likely cause of the high latency?

Accepted Answer

The traffic is traversing a transit VPC with additional NAT instances. If the Direct Connect link is not saturated, the issue could be routing inefficiency. A transit VPC with EC2 instances acting as NAT or proxy can introduce additional hops and latency. VPN over Direct Connect is not relevant. MPLS is the underlying technology for Direct Connect. Increasing bandwidth does not reduce latency caused by routing.

Answer

The Direct Connect link is using a public VIF instead of a private VIF

Answer

The Direct Connect bandwidth is insufficient

Answer

The on-premises network is using a VPN over the Direct Connect link

Question 2

An SAP system on AWS uses a shared file system with Amazon EFS. The operations team notices that file operations have high latency during peak hours. The EFS file system is configured with Bursting Throughput mode. The team monitors the CloudWatch metric PercentIOLimit and sees it consistently at 100%. What should the team do to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the file system to Provisioned Throughput mode. PercentIOLimit at 100% indicates the file system is using all its burst credits. To avoid throttling, the team should change to Provisioned Throughput mode or increase the amount of data stored to earn more credits. Changing to General Purpose performance mode affects latency, not throughput. Enabling encryption adds overhead. Increasing file system size indirectly helps earn more credits but is not a direct solution.

Answer

Enable encryption at rest for the file system

Answer

Change the performance mode to General Purpose

Answer

Increase the size of the file system by adding more files

Question 3

An operations team is troubleshooting an issue where an SAP application is unable to connect to an RDS for SQL Server database. The database is in a private subnet, and the application is in a public subnet. Which TWO actions should the team take to resolve the connectivity issue? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Modify the security group for the database to allow inbound traffic from the application's security group. The database is in a private subnet, so the application needs a route to it. The route table must have a route to the private subnet, and the security group for the database must allow inbound traffic from the application's security group or CIDR. An internet gateway is not needed for database access. A NAT gateway is for outbound traffic. VPC peering is for cross-VPC connectivity.

Answer

Attach an internet gateway to the VPC

Answer

Create a VPC peering connection between the application and database subnets

Answer

Add a route to the route table of the database's subnet that directs traffic to the application's subnet

Question 4

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 needs to implement a health check that verifies the Web Dispatcher is ready to accept traffic. Which THREE configuration options should the team set for the health check? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Set the unhealthy threshold to 5 consecutive failures. The health check should target a custom path that validates the application status, use a reasonable interval, and set a threshold for consecutive failures to mark the instance unhealthy. The healthy threshold determines how many consecutive successes are needed to mark the instance healthy. The path should be a specific endpoint like /sap/wdisp/health. The interval and unhealthy threshold are important to detect failures quickly while avoiding flapping.

Answer

Set the health check port to 443 (HTTPS)

Answer

Set the healthy threshold to 2 consecutive successes

Question 5

An operations team needs to monitor the performance of an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. Which THREE CloudWatch metrics should the team monitor to ensure the database is not resource-constrained? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

DiskReadOps. CPUUtilization, Memory (via custom metrics or CloudWatch agent), and DiskReadOps/DiskWriteOps are key performance indicators. NetworkIn/NetworkOut are important for network throughput but not directly for database resource constraints. DatabaseConnections is for RDS, not EC2-hosted HANA.

Answer

DatabaseConnections

Answer

NetworkIn

Question 6

The operations team uses the IAM policy above for a group of administrators. An administrator tries to terminate an EC2 instance that is tagged with Environment=Production. What will happen?

Accepted Answer

The termination will be denied because there is no explicit Allow for TerminateInstances. The Deny statement has a condition that denies termination only when the tag is NOT Production. Since the instance is tagged Production, the condition is not met, so the Deny does not apply. The Allow statement does not include TerminateInstances, so there is no explicit Allow for termination. The default is implicit Deny, so the action is denied.

Answer

The termination will be denied because the Deny condition applies to all instances

Answer

The termination will be allowed because the Deny condition is not met

Answer

The termination will be allowed because the Deny does not apply to Production instances

Question 7

An operations engineer runs the AWS CLI command above to check the state of an EC2 instance. The output shows the instance is running. However, the SAP application cannot connect to the instance. The security group allows inbound traffic on port 443 from the application's IP. What is the most likely cause of the connectivity issue?

Accepted Answer

The network ACL for the subnet does not allow outbound traffic. The instance is running, so the issue is likely network configuration. A network ACL is stateless and must allow both inbound and outbound traffic. If the outbound rule denies traffic, responses are blocked. Security groups are stateful. The instance state is running, so it is not stopped or terminated. The command only checks state, not health checks.

Answer

The instance is in a stopped state

Answer

The instance is not passing its status checks

Answer

The security group is not associated with the instance

Question 8

The operations team deploys the CloudFormation template above. After the stack creation completes, the EC2 instance is launched but the SAP application is not running. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The UserData script only installs httpd, not the SAP application. The UserData script installs httpd (Apache), not the SAP application. The template does not include any steps to install or start the SAP application. The security group is referenced but not shown; it is likely correct. The instance type is appropriate for SAP. The AMI ID is valid.

Answer

The security group does not allow inbound traffic to the SAP application port

Answer

The instance type is not suitable for SAP applications

Answer

The AMI ID is incorrect

Question 9

A company runs SAP on AWS and notices that the SAP application performance degrades during peak hours. The system uses a db.r5.4xlarge RDS for SAP HANA database. Which AWS service should be used to analyze the database performance metrics and identify bottlenecks?

Accepted Answer

Amazon RDS Performance Insights. Option B is correct because Amazon RDS Performance Insights provides database performance analysis with easy-to-understand dashboards. Option A is wrong because CloudWatch Logs is for log data, not performance metrics. Option C is wrong because AWS X-Ray traces requests, not database performance. Option D is wrong because CloudTrail logs API calls.

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Question 10

An SAP administrator needs to ensure that a critical SAP system on AWS is highly available with automatic failover across Availability Zones. The system uses an SAP HANA database with replication. Which configuration meets these requirements with minimal operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer with health checks and Route 53 failover routing. Option C is correct because using Amazon Route 53 with health checks and an Application Load Balancer provides automatic failover with minimal overhead. Option A is wrong because a single EC2 instance in one AZ does not provide high availability. Option B is wrong because manual DNS update is not automatic. Option D is wrong because ELB alone cannot handle failover without health checks.

Answer

Use a DNS failover record with manual update

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer with static IP addresses

Answer

Deploy a single EC2 instance in one Availability Zone

Question 11

A company wants to automate the backup of their SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. The backup should be stored in Amazon S3 and retained for 30 days. Which AWS service can be used to schedule and manage these backups?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. Option A is correct because AWS Backup can be used to automate backups of EC2 instances and store in S3. Option B is wrong because AWS Storage Gateway is for hybrid storage. Option C is wrong because Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies manage object retention, not scheduling backups. Option D is wrong because AWS Lambda can be used but requires custom code; AWS Backup is simpler.

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway

Question 12

An SAP administrator notices that the SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance is running out of memory frequently. The instance type is r5.4xlarge with 128 GiB of memory. Which action should the administrator take to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Scale up to a larger instance type with more memory. Option C is correct because increasing the instance memory by selecting a larger instance type addresses the memory shortage. Option A is wrong because increasing swap space may cause performance degradation. Option B is wrong because enabling compression is a software setting, not a direct fix. Option D is wrong because reducing the buffer cache can impact performance.

Answer

Reduce the SAP HANA buffer cache size

Answer

Increase swap space on the instance

Answer

Enable SAP HANA compression

Question 13

A company runs an SAP system on AWS and wants to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy that provides a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. The primary site is in us-east-1 and the DR site is in us-west-2. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA system replication to the DR region and use automatic failover. Option B is correct because using SAP HANA system replication with automatic failover provides low RTO and RPO. Option A is wrong because daily backups to S3 have RPO of 24 hours. Option C is wrong because manual snapshots have higher RTO. Option D is wrong because cross-Region replication of EBS snapshots does not provide automatic failover.

Answer

Use Amazon EBS cross-Region replication for all volumes

Answer

Use AWS Backup to copy snapshots to the DR region every 15 minutes

Answer

Take daily backups of the SAP HANA database and store in S3, then restore in us-west-2

Question 14

An SAP administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an EC2 instance running SAP NetWeaver. The administrator wants to receive an alert when CPU utilization exceeds 90% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Alarms. Option C is correct because Amazon CloudWatch Alarms can monitor metrics and trigger actions. Option A is wrong because CloudTrail logs API calls. Option B is wrong because AWS Config tracks resource configuration. Option D is wrong because VPC Flow Logs capture network traffic.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon VPC Flow Logs

Question 15

A company runs SAP on AWS and wants to reduce costs for non-production environments that are used only during business hours (8 AM to 6 PM). Which action should the administrator take to minimize costs without losing data?

Accepted Answer

Stop the instances during non-business hours and use Amazon EBS snapshots for backup. Option D is correct because stopping instances when not in use reduces costs, and using Amazon EBS snapshots for backup preserves data. Option A is wrong because reducing instance size may impact performance. Option B is wrong because converting to Reserved Instances is for steady-state usage. Option C is wrong because terminating instances loses data.

Answer

Convert the instances to Reserved Instances

Answer

Terminate the instances after business hours

Answer

Downsize the instance types to the smallest available