PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 22 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is running SAP on AWS and uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to SAP Web Dispatchers. The operations team notices that some requests are failing with 502 errors. Which THREE actions should be taken to troubleshoot the issue?

Accepted Answer

Review the ALB access logs to identify the target response codes.. Option A is correct because checking health checks can reveal if targets are unhealthy. Option C is correct because reviewing ALB access logs can show the response codes and target details. Option E is correct because checking security group rules ensures the ALB can communicate with the targets. Option B is incorrect because increasing idle timeout is not a direct fix for 502 errors. Option D is incorrect because disabling cross-zone load balancing does not affect 502 errors.

Answer

Disable cross-zone load balancing to isolate the issue.

Answer

Increase the idle timeout setting on the ALB.

Question 2

Which TWO of the following are best practices for operating SAP HANA on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP HANA in a Multi-AZ configuration for high availability.. Option A is correct because using EBS snapshots is a common backup strategy. Option D is correct because Multi-AZ deployment provides high availability. Option B is incorrect because disabling swap is not recommended. Option C is incorrect because stopping instances for backup causes downtime. Option E is incorrect because using Provisioned IOPS is recommended for performance, not General Purpose SSD.

Answer

Use General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes for HANA data files.

Answer

Stop the HANA instance during backup to ensure consistency.

Answer

Disable swap space to improve performance.

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. An SAP administrator is creating an IAM policy for an automated backup script that creates EBS snapshots of SAP HANA volumes. The script also needs to tag the snapshots. However, when the script runs, it fails with an authorization error. What is the missing permission?

Accepted Answer

kms:Encrypt. Option B is correct because the policy includes ec2:CreateSnapshot but not ec2:CreateSnapshot (the specific permission for creating snapshots is ec2:CreateSnapshot, but the error suggests the action is not allowed on the volume resource; however, the policy already allows ec2:CreateSnapshot on all resources. The missing permission is likely ec2:DescribeVolumes to identify which volumes to snapshot, or ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute. However, based on common scenarios, the script may need ec2:DescribeVolumes to list volumes. But let's analyze: The policy allows ec2:CreateSnapshot on * but the action requires resource-level permissions. The error may be because the script is trying to create a snapshot from a volume that is encrypted with a KMS key, and the policy allows kms:Decrypt and kms:GenerateDataKey. A common missing permission is kms:Encrypt because when creating a snapshot of an encrypted volume, the snapshot is also encrypted and requires kms:Encrypt. Option B is correct: kms:Encrypt is needed. Option A is wrong because ec2:DescribeSnapshots is not needed for creating. Option C is wrong because ec2:DeleteSnapshot is not needed. Option D is wrong because ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute is not needed.

Answer

ec2:DescribeSnapshots

Answer

ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute

Answer

ec2:DeleteSnapshot

Question 4

Refer to the exhibit. An SAP HANA database backup fails with the error shown. The backup target is an EFS file system mounted at /backup. The EC2 instance has the appropriate IAM role to access EFS. What is the MOST likely cause of this error?

Accepted Answer

The SAP HANA database user does not have write permissions on the backup directory.. Option B is correct because the error 'Permission denied' indicates that the SAP HANA user (e.g., <sid>adm) does not have write permissions to the backup directory on the EFS file system. Option A is wrong because the error is not about disk space. Option C is wrong because EFS does not have IOPS limits like EBS. Option D is wrong because the IAM role is for accessing EFS, but file permissions are separate.

Answer

The IAM role attached to the EC2 instance does not have permissions to write to EFS.

Answer

The EFS file system has insufficient IOPS for the backup operation.

Answer

The EFS file system is out of storage capacity.

Question 5

Refer to the exhibit. An SAP administrator is configuring Route 53 to point a custom domain name to an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that fronts SAP Web Dispatchers. The record set is configured as shown. However, when users access sap.example.com, they receive a 503 error. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The security group for the ALB is not allowing inbound traffic on port 443 from the internet.. Option D is correct because the ALB's security group must allow inbound traffic on port 443 from the internet. Option A is wrong because the Alias record is correctly configured for an ALB. Option B is wrong because EvaluateTargetHealth is set to true, which is fine. Option C is wrong because the ALB health checks are separate from Route 53 health checks.

Answer

The EvaluateTargetHealth is set to true, which is causing the record to be marked as unhealthy.

Answer

The Alias Target is incorrect; it should be the ALB's DNS name without 'dualstack'.

Answer

The health check for the ALB target group is failing, causing Route 53 to return 503.

Question 6

A company is running a production SAP HANA database on an r5.4xlarge EC2 instance with EBS-backed storage. The operations team notices that the database checkpoint writes are frequently slow, causing application performance degradation. The team has already increased the EBS IOPS and throughput. What should the team do next to improve checkpoint write performance?

Accepted Answer

Modify the Linux I/O scheduler to 'noop' and ensure the EBS-optimized instance attribute is enabled.. Option C is correct because SAP HANA checkpoint writes are sequential and benefit from larger block sizes. The default Linux I/O scheduler can cause fragmentation; switching to noop or using NVMe instance storage with optimized settings is a best practice. Option A is wrong because increasing EBS IOPS further may not help if the issue is I/O scheduling. Option B is wrong because moving to gp2 provides lower performance than io1/io2 with provisioned IOPS. Option D is wrong because disabling checkpoint compression increases write volume and may worsen performance.

Answer

Change the EBS volume type from io1 to gp2 for higher throughput.

Answer

Disable SAP HANA checkpoint compression to reduce CPU overhead.

Answer

Increase the EBS volume size to gain additional baseline IOPS.

Question 7

An SAP NetWeaver administrator needs to patch the operating system of an SAP application server running in an Auto Scaling group. The instances are behind an Application Load Balancer. What is the correct procedure to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Use an Auto Scaling rolling update with lifecycle hooks to launch new instances from a patched AMI and gradually deregister old ones.. Option C is correct because it uses a rolling update with lifecycle hooks to safely drain connections and replace instances. Option A is wrong because stopping traffic to ALB causes full downtime. Option B is wrong because terminating all instances simultaneously causes full downtime. Option D is wrong because detaching from Auto Scaling does not automate replacement.

Answer

Detach one instance from Auto Scaling, patch it, test, then reattach.

Answer

Stop accepting traffic at the ALB, patch all instances manually, then re-enable traffic.

Answer

Terminate all instances at once and let Auto Scaling launch new ones with a patched AMI.

Question 8

A company runs SAP S/4HANA in a multi-AZ deployment with a primary and standby database. During a planned failover test, the database fails over but the SAP system becomes unresponsive. Investigation reveals that the SAP application servers cannot connect to the new primary database because the database VIP is not updated. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The HANA database VIP is not configured to move to the new primary instance during failover.. Option A is correct because in a typical SAP HANA multi-AZ setup, a virtual IP address (VIP) is used for application connectivity. If the VIP is not moved to the new primary, applications will try to connect to the old primary. Option B is wrong because DNS changes are not typically used for HANA failover. Option C is wrong because the HANA hostname usually remains constant via VIP. Option D is wrong because the HANA instance number does not change during failover.

Answer

The HANA instance number changed after failover.

Answer

The DNS record for the HANA host still points to the old primary IP address.

Answer

The HANA hostname in the SAP profile is set to the physical instance hostname instead of the VIP.

Question 9

An SAP Basis administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of all EC2 instances running SAP applications. The team wants to 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. Option D is correct because CloudWatch can collect CPU utilization metrics from EC2 and trigger alarms based on thresholds. Option A is wrong because CloudTrail is for API auditing. Option B is wrong because Config is for resource configuration tracking. Option C is wrong because Trusted Advisor provides best-practice recommendations but not custom metric alarms.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Config

Question 10

A company has an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance with EBS volumes. The operations team needs to ensure that database backups are stored in Amazon S3 and are automatically deleted after 90 days. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle policy to expire objects after 90 days.. Option B is correct because S3 Lifecycle policies can automatically transition objects to cheaper storage classes or expire them after a specified number of days. Option A is wrong because manual deletion is not automated. Option C is wrong because S3 Object Lock is for preventing deletion, not automating it. Option D is wrong because versioning alone does not delete objects.

Answer

Use S3 Object Lock with a retention period of 90 days.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and delete old versions manually.

Answer

Write a script that runs daily to list backups older than 90 days and delete them.

Question 11

A company runs SAP on AWS using a multi-AZ deployment. The database is an SAP HANA system replicated across two Availability Zones. During a recent failure, the standby HANA instance did not take over automatically. The operations team finds that the HANA replication status was 'ERROR' before the failure. What is the most likely reason for the failed takeover?

Accepted Answer

The HANA system replication was not in sync; data was not fully replicated to the standby.. Option C is correct because if the HANA system replication status is in error, automatic takeover cannot occur. The replication link must be healthy for the standby to have the latest data. Option A is wrong because network connectivity issues would be reflected in replication status. Option B is wrong because a misconfigured fencing mechanism would not cause replication error. Option D is wrong because different instance numbers would prevent replication setup entirely.

Answer

The standby HANA instance had a different instance number than the primary.

Answer

The fencing mechanism was not configured correctly in the cluster.

Answer

The network latency between the two Availability Zones was too high.

Question 12

An SAP administrator needs to restore an SAP HANA database from a backup stored in Amazon S3. The backup was created using AWS Backup. What is the required IAM permission for the restore operation?

Accepted Answer

s3:GetObject. Option B is correct because to restore from S3, the HANA database user or the backup tool needs s3:GetObject permission to read the backup files. Option A is wrong because s3:PutObject is for writing backups. Option C is wrong because ec2:DescribeInstances is not needed for restore from S3. Option D is wrong because kms:Decrypt may be needed if encryption is used, but the question asks for required permission, and GetObject is essential.

Answer

kms:Decrypt

Answer

s3:PutObject

Answer

ec2:DescribeInstances

Question 13

A company is running SAP Business Suite on AWS with a Microsoft SQL Server database. The operations team needs to implement automated database backups with point-in-time recovery. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. Option D is correct because AWS Backup supports SQL Server databases running on EC2, enabling automated backups and point-in-time recovery. Option A is wrong because RDS is for managed databases, not for SQL Server on EC2. Option B is wrong because Storage Gateway is for hybrid storage. Option C is wrong because DMS is for migration, not backup.

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Question 14

An SAP system running on AWS is experiencing high memory utilization on the application server. The team suspects a memory leak in the SAP ABAP application. Which tool or process should be used to identify the root cause?

Accepted Answer

Run SAP transaction STAD to analyze memory consumption per user and program.. Option A is correct because SAP STAD (Transaction STAD) provides detailed analysis of memory consumption by user and program. Option B is wrong because CloudWatch can show overall memory usage but not per-process details. Option C is wrong because OS-level tools like 'top' show memory per process but not ABAP-specific memory allocation. Option D is wrong because SAP HANA Studio is for database, not application server memory.

Answer

Use the Linux 'top' command to identify the process consuming the most memory.

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to check memory consumption of the database.

Answer

Enable detailed CloudWatch memory metrics on the EC2 instance.

Question 15

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to monitor the health of an SAP HANA database running on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch alarms based on EC2 instance metrics. Option A is correct because CloudWatch can monitor EC2 instance metrics like CPU and memory. Option D is correct because SAP HANA provides built-in SQL queries for health checks. Option B is wrong because AWS Config is for configuration tracking, not real-time health. Option C is wrong because CloudTrail is for API auditing. Option E is wrong because Trusted Advisor does not monitor HANA-specific health.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor checks for HANA best practices

Answer

AWS Config rules to check HANA configuration

Answer

AWS CloudTrail logs for HANA API calls