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

Question 1

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. The correct metrics to proactively identify performance issues in an SAP NetWeaver application server are CPUUtilization (B), Memory utilization via the CloudWatch Agent (C), and DiskQueueDepth (E). CPUUtilization indicates CPU load, Memory utilization shows memory pressure, and DiskQueueDepth reflects I/O bottlenecks. S3 request metrics (A) are for object storage, not the application server itself. VPC Flow Logs (D) capture network traffic metadata, not performance metrics.

Answer

S3 request metrics

Answer

VPC Flow Logs

Question 2

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. AWS Systems Manager Maintenance Windows allow you to schedule patching tasks, while AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates the patching process. Option C is incorrect because Amazon Inspector is a vulnerability scanning service, not used for patching. Option D is incorrect because AWS CloudFormation is an infrastructure provisioning service. Option E is incorrect because AWS CodeDeploy is an application deployment service.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy

Question 3

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 4

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 5

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 6

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. 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 7

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 8

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 9

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

Question 10

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 11

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 12

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 13

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 14

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 15

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