PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 21 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP operations team runs a critical SAP NetWeaver application on AWS. The team needs to patch the underlying operating system of the EC2 instances without causing downtime. The instances are part of an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer, and the SAP application is stateless. Which AWS service should the team use to automate the patching process while ensuring zero downtime?

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

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager. AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is designed to automate the patching of managed nodes, including EC2 instances. It supports patch baselines, maintenance windows, and integration with load balancers to perform rolling updates without downtime. This makes it the ideal service for patching SAP application servers in an Auto Scaling group.

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate

Question 2

An SAP Basis team runs an SAP S/4HANA production system on a single EC2 instance in a single Availability Zone. The database is SAP HANA with persistent memory. The team wants to ensure that a hardware failure on the host does not cause unplanned downtime and that the SAP HANA instance can be automatically recovered on another host. The team has configured the instance with a placement group and uses an Auto Scaling group of size 1 with a launch template. Which additional AWS feature should be enabled to automatically recover the instance on new hardware if the underlying host fails?

Accepted Answer

Configure the EC2 instance with a detailed CloudWatch alarm on the StatusCheckFailed metric and set the alarm action to recover the instance.. Amazon EC2 automatic recovery is designed to recover an instance on new hardware if the underlying host fails. It uses a CloudWatch alarm on the StatusCheckFailed metric with the recover action. This maintains the same instance ID, private IP, and Elastic IP, which is critical for SAP HANA, as it allows the database to restart and resume operations without reconfiguration. Other options do not provide this automatic recovery on new hardware for a single-instance deployment.

Answer

Enable EC2 automatic recovery by setting the Auto Scaling group to maintain the desired capacity and configuring the launch template with a user data script that restarts SAP HANA.

Answer

Attach an Elastic Load Balancer to the instance and configure health checks to route traffic to a standby instance in another Availability Zone.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the EC2 instance and configure an AWS Lambda function to restart the instance when a host failure is detected via AWS Health Dashboard events.

Question 3

A company operates an SAP HANA scale-out system on AWS with multiple worker nodes. The system uses SAP HANA system replication for high availability between two Availability Zones. The operations team needs to monitor the replication status and receive alerts if the replication falls behind or breaks. They want to use native AWS services to collect and analyze the HANA replication metrics without installing third-party agents on the database hosts. Which solution should the team implement?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights for SAP HANA to automatically discover and monitor HANA replication metrics.. CloudWatch Application Insights for SAP HANA is designed to automatically discover and monitor SAP HANA, including system replication metrics, using native AWS services and the CloudWatch agent. It provides dashboards and alarms without third-party agents. SSM Agent scripting is not native HANA monitoring, CloudTrail captures AWS API calls only, and GuardDuty focuses on security threats rather than application replication health.

Answer

Use AWS CloudTrail to capture HANA replication status changes and create a CloudWatch alarm on the trail.

Answer

Use Amazon GuardDuty to monitor network traffic between the HANA nodes and alert on replication anomalies.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Agent to run a script that queries the HANA system replication status and pushes custom metrics to Amazon CloudWatch.

Question 4

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and uses AWS Backup to protect the database volumes. The backup plan schedules daily backups at 01:00 UTC with a 35-day retention. The operations team notices that some daily backups are missing from the vault. Which configuration change should be made to ensure all daily backups are retained for the full 35 days?

Accepted Answer

Change the backup plan's lifecycle rule to expire backups after 35 days and ensure the backup vault's access policy allows retention.. The missing backups are likely due to a lifecycle rule that deletes recovery points before 35 days. Adjusting the lifecycle to expire after 35 days and ensuring the vault access policy permits retention will keep all daily backups for the intended period. Other options either apply to wrong platforms or do not address premature deletion.

Answer

Enable continuous backup for the SAP HANA volumes and set point-in-time recovery to 35 days.

Answer

Modify the backup plan to use a cold storage transition after 7 days and set the retention to 35 days.

Answer

Increase the backup window to 8 hours and enable Windows VSS backup.

Question 5

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS and uses an Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) file system mounted on multiple application servers for shared SAP global files. During a recent failover test, the SAP application servers took a long time to recover because the EFS mount was not automatically remounted after an instance reboot. Which AWS service or feature should the company use to ensure the EFS file system is automatically mounted at instance startup?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager State Manager association. State Manager associations can enforce a desired state on instances, such as ensuring an EFS file system is mounted. By creating an association that runs at instance start or on a schedule, the company can automatically remount EFS after a reboot, improving failover recovery. This is the only option that provides ongoing enforcement of the mount configuration.

Answer

AWS Backup for Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon EC2 user data script

Answer

Amazon EFS Lifecycle Management

Question 6

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The operations team needs to implement a backup strategy for the SAP HANA database that meets the following requirements: (1) backups must be stored in a durable, highly available storage service, (2) backups must be automatically retained for 90 days, and (3) the solution must minimize operational overhead. Which TWO actions should the team take? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Create an Amazon S3 bucket with a lifecycle policy to transition backups to Glacier after 30 days and expire after 90 days.. The team should use SAP HANA's native backup to Amazon S3 because it provides a consistent database backup and leverages S3's durability. Then, they should configure a lifecycle policy on the S3 bucket to automatically manage retention for 90 days, reducing manual intervention. Together, these actions meet all requirements with minimal operational overhead.

Answer

Schedule AWS Lambda functions to copy EBS snapshots to Amazon S3 Glacier.

Answer

Use AWS Storage Gateway to store backups on-premises.

Answer

Configure an AWS Backup plan to back up the EBS volumes of the SAP HANA instance.

Question 7

A company runs a critical SAP S/4HANA system on AWS with a multi-AZ deployment. The SAP HANA database uses synchronous replication to a secondary instance in another Availability Zone. During a recent failover test, the operations team observed that the SAP application servers took a long time to reconnect to the new primary database after failover. The team wants to reduce the application server reconnect time. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Configure the SAP application servers to use the SAP HANA hostname with a short TTL in DNS.. The time for SAP application servers to reconnect after a failover is largely determined by how quickly they can resolve the new primary database's address. Using DNS with a short TTL ensures that the application servers do not cache the old IP address for an extended period. When the DNS record is updated to point to the new primary, the short TTL allows for rapid propagation, enabling the application servers to reconnect quickly. This is a standard technique for reducing failover time in SAP on AWS deployments.

Answer

Increase the SAP HANA replication mode to synchronous in-memory (SRAM).

Answer

Configure the SAP application servers to use a virtual IP address (VIP) that is moved during failover.

Answer

Enable SAP HANA fast restart on the secondary instance.

Question 8

A company runs SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) on AWS with an Oracle database on an Amazon RDS for Oracle Multi-AZ instance. The operations team needs to perform a minor version upgrade of the database engine with minimal downtime. The upgrade must be applied during a maintenance window. Which TWO actions should the team take to ensure the upgrade is performed with minimal impact to the SAP system? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Modify the RDS instance to enable auto minor version upgrade and set the maintenance window to a time when SAP usage is low.. Enabling auto minor version upgrade ensures the upgrade is applied automatically during the maintenance window, reducing manual effort and downtime. Using RDS blue/green deployment allows testing the upgrade in a staging environment and then switching over with minimal downtime. Together, these actions provide a controlled and low-impact upgrade process for the SAP ECC system.

Answer

Create a manual snapshot of the RDS instance before the upgrade and perform the upgrade manually using the AWS Management Console during the maintenance window.

Answer

Schedule the upgrade during the maintenance window and ensure that the SAP application is stopped to avoid any data corruption during the upgrade process.

Answer

Configure the SAP application to use a read replica for read-only operations during the upgrade to reduce load on the primary instance.

Question 9

A company runs a critical SAP S/4HANA system on AWS with an Oracle database on Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is in a Multi-AZ deployment. During a recent failover test, the team noticed that the SAP application lost connectivity to the database for several minutes because the application servers were using the DNS name of the primary database instance instead of the RDS endpoint. The team wants to ensure that the SAP application automatically reconnects to the new primary after a failover with minimal downtime. What should the team do?

Accepted Answer

Configure the SAP application to connect using the RDS cluster endpoint, which automatically routes connections to the current primary instance.. In an Amazon RDS for Oracle Multi-AZ deployment, the cluster endpoint always resolves to the current primary instance. After a failover, the DNS record for the cluster endpoint is updated automatically, so the SAP application can reconnect using the same connection string. Using the instance endpoint or manual DNS updates does not provide automatic failover, and an ALB cannot proxy Oracle connections.

Answer

Create an Amazon Route 53 alias record that points to the primary database instance's IP address and update it manually after failover.

Answer

Configure the SAP application to connect using the RDS instance endpoint DNS name, which automatically points to the new primary after failover.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer in front of the RDS instance to distribute connections and handle failover.

Question 10

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS and uses an AWS Storage Gateway file gateway to provide NFS access to an Amazon S3 bucket for storing SAP transport files. The operations team needs to ensure that the file gateway can be restored quickly in the event of an instance failure. They want to automate the backup of the file gateway configuration and cache. Which AWS service should they use to orchestrate the backup?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Automation with a runbook that triggers the Storage Gateway backup and snapshots the cache volume.. AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks can orchestrate the backup of a Storage Gateway file gateway by snapshotting the cache volume and capturing configuration. This can be scheduled and automated. AWS Backup does not support Storage Gateway, S3 Cross-Region Replication only replicates bucket objects, and Storage Gateway does not automatically snapshot its cache. Therefore, Systems Manager Automation is the correct service to use.

Answer

AWS Backup with a backup plan that includes the Storage Gateway volumes and configuration.

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway automatic snapshots of the cache volume to Amazon S3.

Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication to replicate the S3 bucket used by the file gateway.

Question 11

A company runs a critical SAP ERP system on AWS with an Oracle database on Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is in a Multi-AZ deployment. During a recent maintenance window, the RDS instance failed over to the standby, and the SAP application lost connectivity for several minutes because the application servers were still pointing to the old IP address. The company needs to reduce the failover time. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Configure the SAP application servers to use the RDS instance's DNS endpoint name instead of the IP address.. The RDS Multi-AZ failover mechanism updates the DNS record of the DB instance endpoint to point to the new primary. Therefore, the SAP application must connect using the DNS endpoint name, not a hardcoded IP address. This allows the application to resolve the new IP automatically after failover, minimizing downtime. The other options either use unsupported features or add unnecessary complexity.

Answer

Create an Amazon Route 53 private hosted zone with a CNAME record that points to the RDS endpoint, and configure the SAP application to use that CNAME.

Answer

Modify the SAP application's connection string to use the IP address of the standby database instance.

Answer

Enable RDS Proxy for the Oracle database and point the SAP application to the proxy endpoint.

Question 12

A company runs SAP ERP on AWS with a primary site in eu-west-1 and a disaster recovery (DR) site in eu-central-1. The RTO is 4 hours and RPO is 15 minutes. The SAP database is Oracle running on EC2 with EBS volumes. The operations team wants to automate the DR failover process to minimize manual intervention. Which AWS service should they use to orchestrate the failover?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Automation. AWS Systems Manager Automation provides runbooks that can automate the failover process for SAP and Oracle. It can execute steps in sequence, such as stopping the primary database, promoting the standby, updating Route 53 records, and starting SAP application servers. This reduces manual intervention and helps meet the RTO and RPO requirements.

Answer

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS Step Functions

Question 13

A company runs SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP on multiple Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The SAP system uses SAP GUI for Windows to connect to the application servers. The operations team notices that some users are experiencing intermittent connection failures and slow response times. The team suspects that the ALB health checks are failing for some instances, causing them to be removed from the target group. Which configuration change should the team make to ensure the ALB health checks accurately reflect the SAP application server's availability?

Accepted Answer

Configure the ALB health check to use the SAP application server's HTTP port and a URL that returns a 200 OK status when the SAP instance is running, such as /sap/public/ping.. The ALB health check should target an SAP-provided endpoint that returns a success status when the application server is fully operational. The /sap/public/ping URL is designed for this purpose and is the recommended health check for SAP NetWeaver Application Server. Using a TCP check on the SAP GUI port or adjusting timing parameters does not guarantee the application server is ready to serve requests, and sticky sessions do not affect health check accuracy.

Answer

Change the health check to use TCP on the SAP GUI port (typically 3200) and rely on the port being open to indicate the application server is available.

Answer

Increase the health check interval and timeout values to reduce the frequency of health checks, allowing more time for the SAP instance to respond.

Answer

Enable sticky sessions on the ALB and configure the health check to use the SAP instance's hostname instead of an IP address.

Question 14

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and needs to monitor the database for performance issues. The operations team wants to collect HANA-specific metrics such as memory usage, CPU, and disk I/O, and visualize them in Amazon CloudWatch. Which solution should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP HANA CloudWatch integration using the AWS Solution for SAP HANA monitoring, which includes a Lambda function that queries HANA and publishes metrics.. The AWS Solution for SAP HANA monitoring is purpose-built to collect HANA-specific metrics and publish them to CloudWatch. It uses a Lambda function that queries HANA and sends metrics, providing a supported and efficient way to monitor performance. Other options either lack HANA-specific collection or require custom, unsupported configurations.

Answer

Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the HANA instance and configure it to collect the HANA metrics using the SAP HANA monitoring scripts.

Answer

Enable enhanced monitoring on the EC2 instance and use the HANA Studio to export metrics to CloudWatch.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) to run HANA monitoring queries and publish metrics to CloudWatch.

Question 15

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS using multiple EC2 X1e instances in a scale-out configuration with SAP HANA system replication for high availability. The operations team needs to monitor the replication status and receive alerts if the replication falls behind by more than 5 seconds. The team wants to use AWS native services to collect and analyze the replication metrics. Which solution should the team implement to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Install the SAP HANA monitoring agent on each EC2 instance and configure it to publish replication metrics to Amazon CloudWatch as custom metrics. Create a CloudWatch alarm that triggers when the replication delay exceeds 5 seconds.. Publishing SAP HANA replication metrics as CloudWatch custom metrics allows the team to leverage CloudWatch alarms for threshold-based alerting. The SAP HANA monitoring agent can collect the replication delay and push it to CloudWatch. This is a native AWS solution that provides the required monitoring and alerting with minimal custom development, unlike log-based approaches or non-existent direct integrations.

Answer

Enable enhanced monitoring on the EC2 instances and use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the SAP HANA replication metrics that are automatically published by the EC2 hypervisor.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA to send replication alerts directly to Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) using the SAP HANA alerting framework, and subscribe the operations team to the SNS topic.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager to run a script on each EC2 instance that queries the SAP HANA replication status and sends the results to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Create a metric filter and alarm based on the log data.