PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 36 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs SAP on AWS and wants to automate the monitoring of SAP system health. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. Amazon CloudWatch [CORRECT] is right because it is the AWS monitoring service that collects metrics, logs, and events, and it can ingest SAP health data (e.g., via the CloudWatch agent or custom metrics) and trigger alarms based on thresholds. AWS Lambda [CORRECT] is right because it can be invoked by CloudWatch alarms or EventBridge events to run automation code that checks SAP system health, calls SAP APIs, or takes remediation actions, enabling serverless automated monitoring. Together, CloudWatch detects conditions and Lambda executes the response logic, which is the standard event-driven pattern for automating SAP health monitoring on AWS. AWS Config is for tracking resource configuration changes and compliance, not for runtime health monitoring or automation. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling only adjusts EC2 capacity and does not monitor SAP application health. Amazon SQS is a message queuing service and provides no monitoring or automation capability by itself.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Question 2

A company is planning to migrate its SAP workloads to AWS. Which THREE AWS services are commonly used to set up a secure network connectivity between on-premises and AWS? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Transit Gateway. AWS Transit Gateway (A) is correct because it acts as a central hub that connects on-premises networks (via VPN or Direct Connect attachments) to multiple VPCs, simplifying and securing hybrid SAP connectivity at scale. AWS Site-to-Site VPN (B) is correct because it establishes an encrypted IPsec tunnel over the internet between the on-premises customer gateway and an AWS virtual private gateway or Transit Gateway, providing secure hybrid connectivity. AWS Direct Connect (C) is correct because it provides a dedicated, private physical network connection from on-premises to AWS, offering consistent low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity often required for latency-sensitive SAP workloads. VPC Peering (D) is not correct here because it only connects VPCs to each other within AWS and does not provide on-premises-to-AWS connectivity. AWS Client VPN (E) is not correct because it is a managed remote-access VPN for individual users/endpoints, not for site-to-site connectivity between a corporate data center and AWS.

Answer

VPC Peering

Answer

AWS Client VPN

Question 3

A company is running an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance. The operations team notices that the SAP application is responding slowly during peak hours. CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization and increased swap usage. Which combination of actions should the team take to resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Resize the EC2 instance to a larger instance type with more vCPUs and memory.. The SAP HANA database on EC2 is experiencing high CPU and swap usage, indicating resource exhaustion. Resizing to a larger instance type with more vCPUs and memory directly addresses the bottleneck by providing more compute and memory resources, which is the most effective solution for a vertically scalable workload like SAP HANA.

Answer

Enable Auto Scaling for the EC2 instance to automatically add more instances.

Answer

Change the instance type to a compute-optimized instance to improve CPU performance.

Answer

Add more EBS volumes and increase the number of read replicas.

Question 4

An SAP system administrator notices that the SAP Central Services (ASCS) instance on an EC2 instance has failed. The instance is still running, but the ASCS service is unresponsive. What is the MOST efficient way to restore the ASCS service without affecting the SAP application?

Accepted Answer

Restart the ASCS service using SAP MMC or sapcontrol.. The most efficient way to restore the ASCS service without affecting the SAP application is to restart the ASCS service using SAP MMC or sapcontrol (Option D). This action is quick and minimally disruptive, as it only restarts the service without impacting the underlying EC2 instance or requiring failover procedures. 
- Option A (fail over to secondary node) is less efficient because it requires a properly configured cluster environment and may take longer to orchestrate, and it may not be necessary if the primary node's service can be restarted.
- Option B (reboot the EC2 instance) is inefficient and disruptive because it restarts the entire instance, affecting all services and potentially causing downtime for the SAP application.
- Option C (restore from AMI backup) is the most time-consuming and resource-intensive approach, and is only appropriate if the instance or service is corrupt and cannot be recovered by restarting.

Answer

Manually fail over the ASCS to the secondary node in the cluster.

Answer

Reboot the EC2 instance hosting the ASCS.

Answer

Restore the ASCS instance from the most recent AMI backup.

Question 5

A company is running SAP on AWS and needs to automate OS-level patching for their SAP application servers. Which AWS service should they use to schedule and apply patches?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager. AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates the process of patching operating systems and applications across EC2 instances, including SAP application servers. It uses patch baselines and maintenance windows to schedule and apply patches at scale, with compliance reporting. This is the purpose-built AWS service for OS-level patch automation.

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Events

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Question 6

An SAP Basis administrator needs to monitor the health of SAP application servers running on EC2. The administrator wants to receive alerts when a server becomes unreachable or when critical SAP processes stop. Which AWS service should be used to create a custom dashboard and set up alarms?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. CloudWatch can monitor EC2 instances and create alarms based on custom metrics, including process status. Option A is wrong because CloudTrail is for auditing API calls. Option C is wrong because Config is for resource compliance. Option D is wrong because Trusted Advisor provides best-practice checks but not custom monitoring.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 7

An SAP administrator is setting up backup for an SAP HANA database running on an EC2 instance. The database is 1 TB in size. Which TWO AWS services can be used to create a cost-effective backup strategy?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. AWS Backup (option C) is correct because it is a fully managed backup service that can centrally define backup policies, schedules, and retention rules for supported resources including EBS volumes that host the SAP HANA database, enabling a cost-effective, automated strategy. Amazon EBS snapshots (option D) are correct because they capture point-in-time, incremental backups of the EBS volumes underlying the EC2 instance, so only changed blocks are stored after the first snapshot, which is a cost-effective way to protect a 1 TB SAP HANA database. AWS Database Migration Service (option A) is not a backup service; it is used to migrate or replicate databases, so it does not provide a backup strategy. AWS Storage Gateway (option B) is a hybrid storage service for integrating on-premises environments with AWS storage, not a native backup mechanism for an EC2-hosted SAP HANA database. Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies (option E) can store backup files and transition them to cheaper storage classes, but by itself it is not a backup service that creates the SAP HANA database backups, so it is not one of the two services that directly create the backup.

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway

Answer

Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies

Question 8

A company runs SAP ERP on AWS using a single Availability Zone. The system includes an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance with 2 TB of memory. The operations team plans to perform a major version upgrade of the SAP HANA database, which requires approximately 4 hours of downtime. The company's SLA allows a maximum of 2 hours of downtime. The team decides to use a blue/green deployment strategy by creating a new HANA instance in a different Availability Zone and replicating data using HANA System Replication (HSR). After setting up replication, they perform a failover to the new instance. However, the failover takes 3 hours due to the large amount of data that needs to be synchronized. What should the team do to meet the 2-hour downtime requirement?

Accepted Answer

Use HANA System Replication with initial snapshot by taking a backup of the source, restoring on the target, and then setting up replication.. The 3-hour failover is caused by HSR having to synchronize the full 2 TB dataset over the network during initial setup. Pre-seeding the target with a backup/restore of the source database means HSR only needs to replicate the delta (changed data since the backup), drastically reducing the time needed to bring the target in sync. This lets the actual cutover fit within the 2-hour SLA.

Answer

Scale up the source HANA instance to a larger instance type to speed up replication.

Answer

Increase the network bandwidth between the two Availability Zones to 10 Gbps.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS for SAP HANA instead of self-managed EC2.

Question 9

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS using a clustered environment with two EC2 instances in an active/passive configuration. The cluster uses a shared EFS file system for the SAP HANA shared volume. The operations team recently migrated the EFS file system from the previous generation to Elastic Throughput mode to improve performance. After the migration, the HANA database becomes unresponsive intermittently. The team notices that the EFS mount target is in a different Availability Zone than the active HANA instance. What is the most likely cause of the unresponsiveness?

Accepted Answer

The EFS mount target is in a different Availability Zone than the active HANA instance, causing high latency and potential timeouts.. EFS mount targets are Availability Zone-specific, and cross-AZ access introduces additional network latency and potential timeouts. For a latency-sensitive workload like SAP HANA, which requires low-latency shared storage, mounting an EFS file system from a different AZ than the active HANA instance causes intermittent unresponsiveness due to increased round-trip times and possible packet loss.

Answer

The EFS file system does not provide sufficient IOPS for HANA workloads.

Answer

The EFS Elastic Throughput mode is throttling the HANA database traffic.

Answer

The EFS file system has reached its maximum number of concurrent connections.

Question 10

A company is running SAP on AWS and needs to monitor the available memory on their SAP application servers. Which AWS service can be used to collect and visualize memory utilization metrics?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch with CloudWatch Agent. Amazon CloudWatch with the CloudWatch Agent is the correct choice because the agent can be installed on EC2 instances to collect custom metrics, including memory utilization, which is not available by default from the hypervisor. The agent sends these metrics to CloudWatch, where you can visualize them using dashboards or set alarms. This directly addresses the need to monitor SAP application server memory on AWS.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 11

An SAP administrator notices that the SAP HANA database is experiencing high I/O latency. The database is running on an EC2 instance with EBS volumes. What is the MOST effective initial step to diagnose the I/O bottleneck?

Accepted Answer

Check the EBS volume queue length in CloudWatch. EBS volume queue length is the key CloudWatch metric that reveals whether I/O requests are backing up because the volume cannot keep up with demand. A rising queue length directly indicates an I/O bottleneck at the EBS layer, making it the most effective first diagnostic step. Other options either change the environment (resizing, switching storage) or add monitoring breadth without targeting the specific bottleneck.

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS volumes

Answer

Switch to instance store volumes

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring on the EC2 instance

Question 12

Which TWO steps are required to set up automated backups for an SAP HANA database running on EC2?

Accepted Answer

Install and configure the SAP HANA Backint agent for Amazon S3. Option B is correct because SAP HANA's native backup framework integrates with external storage through the Backint API, and AWS provides the SAP HANA Backint agent for Amazon S3, which must be installed and configured on the EC2 instance so HANA can write backups directly to S3. Option D is correct because the Backint agent requires a target Amazon S3 bucket to store the backup files, so that bucket must be created (and referenced in the agent's configuration) before automated backups can run. Option A is not required because EBS snapshots capture volumes at the block level and are not the mechanism HANA uses for database-consistent automated backups via Backint. Option C is not required because a lifecycle policy only manages storage-class transitions of objects already in S3 and is an optional cost optimization, not a setup step for automated backups. Option E is not required because HANA Studio is an administration client and does not provide an 'enable automatic backups' switch; scheduling is done via HANA's backup configuration (e.g., DBA Cockpit or scripts) combined with the Backint agent.

Answer

Create an Amazon EBS snapshot of the HANA data volumes

Answer

Set up a lifecycle policy to transition backups to Amazon S3 Glacier

Answer

Enable automatic backups in the HANA Studio

Question 13

Your company runs an SAP ERP system on AWS. The SAP application servers are in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones. The SAP HANA database runs on a single EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes. Recently, the database instance experienced a failure due to an underlying hardware issue, and you had to recover from an EBS snapshot. The recovery took longer than expected, and management wants to reduce the recovery time objective (RTO). What should you do to achieve a lower RTO for the HANA database?

Accepted Answer

Set up SAP HANA System Replication to a secondary instance in a different Availability Zone. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) provides continuous replication to a secondary instance in a different Availability Zone, enabling rapid failover with minimal data loss and low RTO. This is the recommended approach for high availability and disaster recovery of HANA on AWS, as it allows the secondary to take over quickly without restoring from snapshots.

Answer

Create more frequent EBS snapshots and store them in Amazon S3

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS volumes and use Provisioned IOPS

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group for the database instance

Question 14

Your company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS. The system has a three-tier architecture with a web dispatcher, application servers, and a HANA database. The operations team has been receiving alerts about high CPU usage on the application servers during peak hours. The application servers are currently running on m5.large instances. You need to ensure consistent performance without over-provisioning. What is the most cost-effective solution?

Accepted Answer

Configure Auto Scaling with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization. Auto Scaling with a step scaling policy based on CPU utilization dynamically adds or removes application server instances in response to load, ensuring consistent performance during peak hours without paying for over-provisioned capacity around the clock. This is the most cost-effective and operationally sound approach.

Answer

Add more application servers manually during peak hours

Answer

Upgrade all application servers to m5.xlarge instances

Answer

Use reserved instances to lower cost but keep existing instances

Question 15

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and uses AWS Systems Manager to automate patching of the operating system. After a recent patching cycle, the SAP HANA database failed to start. The administrator checked the logs and found that the HANA service was not starting due to a missing library dependency. What should the administrator do to prevent this issue in future patching cycles?

Accepted Answer

Test patches in a non-production environment and create a new AMI after successful validation. Testing patches in a non-production environment and then creating a golden AMI after validation ensures that any missing library dependencies are caught before production patching. This is the standard SAP-on-AWS best practice for change control, aligning with AWS Well-Architected and SAP's own guidance. It prevents the exact failure mode seen here by validating the full patch set against HANA before rollout.

Answer

Use AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager to apply patches but exclude the library in question

Answer

Create a script to reinstall the missing library after patching

Answer

Set up a maintenance window that stops HANA before patching and starts it after