PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Test 9 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP Basis administrator notices that the SAP system's response time is increasing during peak hours. The system uses an SAP NetWeaver application server on EC2 and an SAP HANA database on a separate EC2 instance. CloudWatch metrics show that the application server's CPU utilization is at 80% and the database server's CPU is at 30%. The application server is an m5.2xlarge, and the database is an r5.2xlarge. The administrator checks the SAP work process overview and sees that all dialog work processes are busy. What should the administrator do to resolve the performance issue?

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

Accepted Answer

Increase the number of dialog work processes in the SAP application server profile.. All dialog work processes are busy, which is the bottleneck — the application server cannot process more requests concurrently. Increasing the number of dialog work processes in the SAP profile (rdisp/wp_no_dia) allows more parallel request handling. The CPU at 80% on the app server is a symptom of work process saturation, not the root cause.

Answer

Increase the database server's CPU capacity by changing to a larger instance type.

Answer

Increase the instance size of the application server to a compute-optimized type.

Answer

Add another application server to the system and distribute the load.

Question 2

A company is running a production SAP HANA database on an AWS EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes. The operations team notices that the database performance degrades during peak hours. Which AWS service can be used to analyze the disk I/O performance and identify bottlenecks?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. CloudWatch provides metrics for EBS volumes including read/write throughput and IOPS, which can be used to analyze disk I/O performance. Option A (AWS Trusted Advisor) is wrong because it provides best-practice checks but not real-time performance analysis. Option B (AWS Config) is wrong because it tracks configuration changes, not performance. Option C is correct. Option D is a duplicate of Option B and is also wrong for the same reason.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS Config

Question 3

An SAP system is running on an EC2 instance with an attached EBS volume for /usr/sap. The operations team notices that the volume is almost full. Which action should be taken to increase the available space without downtime?

Accepted Answer

Modify the EBS volume to increase its size while the instance is running, then extend the filesystem.. Amazon EBS volumes can be modified while attached to a running instance using the Elastic Volumes feature. You can increase the size, adjust IOPS, or change the volume type without downtime. After modifying the volume, you must extend the file system to use the additional space. This is the correct approach to increase available space without downtime.

Answer

Reduce the size of the volume by modifying the volume configuration.

Answer

Create a new larger EBS volume, attach it to the instance, and copy the data.

Answer

Create a snapshot of the volume and use it to create a larger volume, then attach and mount.

Question 4

An SAP system is experiencing high CPU utilization on the application server. The administrator wants to automatically scale the EC2 instance based on CPU usage. Which AWS service should be used?

Accepted Answer

AWS Auto Scaling. AWS Auto Scaling is the service that automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group based on scaling policies, such as CPU utilization. It can scale out to handle high CPU and scale in when demand decreases, ensuring optimal performance and cost.

Answer

Elastic Load Balancing

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch

Question 5

Which THREE AWS services can be used to automate the patching of SAP application servers on EC2? (Choose 3).

Accepted Answer

AWS OpsWorks. AWS OpsWorks (B) is correct because it provides configuration management via Chef/Puppet stacks and layers, allowing you to define and automatically run recipes that install OS and application patches on EC2 instances running SAP application servers. AWS CodeDeploy (C) is correct because it automates software deployments to EC2 instances using appspec.yml hooks, so patching scripts or packages can be pushed and executed automatically across SAP server fleets. AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager (E) is correct because it uses patch baselines and maintenance windows to scan and automatically install OS-level patches on EC2 instances tagged as SAP application servers, with compliance reporting. AWS Auto Scaling (A) is not correct because it only adjusts capacity based on scaling policies and does not perform patching. AWS CloudFormation (D) is not correct because it provisions and manages infrastructure as code but does not itself automate ongoing patch installation on running instances.

Answer

AWS Auto Scaling

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Question 6

An SAP administrator created the IAM policy shown for a backup script. The script fails when trying to upload a backup to S3. What is the likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The KMS key ARN is malformed; it contains extra characters.. The KMS key ARN is malformed because it contains extra characters, which causes the IAM policy to be invalid and the backup script's upload to fail. A valid KMS key ARN follows the format arn:aws:kms:region:account-id:key/key-id, and any deviation — such as extra colons, slashes, or characters — will cause the policy statement to be rejected or the KMS operation to fail, preventing the S3 upload that requires SSE-KMS encryption.

Answer

The resource for S3 should include the bucket itself (arn:aws:s3:::sap-backup-bucket).

Answer

The ec2:Describe* action is not required and causes a conflict.

Answer

The s3:* action is too broad and is denied by an S3 bucket policy.

Question 7

A company is deploying SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to ensure high availability for the central services (ASCS and ERS). The architecture uses two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones with a shared file system using Amazon EFS for /sapmnt. The SAP system is configured with an enqueue replication server. The operations team needs to automate the failover of the ASCS instance in case of a failure. The team is considering using AWS services for this purpose. Which approach should the team use?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon Route 53 with health checks and a custom script to update DNS record on failover.. Route 53 health checks can monitor the ASCS instance and a custom script can update DNS records to point to the standby instance on failure, enabling failover across Availability Zones. Option B is incorrect because an Application Load Balancer cannot properly direct traffic to a single active ASCS instance and does not handle the stateful nature of SAP enqueue replication. Option C is incorrect because Auto Scaling is designed for scaling out, not for failover of stateful services like ASCS. Option D is incorrect because EC2 Auto Recovery only recovers the same instance on new hardware if it fails, but it does not failover to a different Availability Zone, which is required for high availability.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer with a target group containing both ASCS instances.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of 2 instances and a lifecycle hook to handle failover.

Answer

Enable EC2 Auto Recovery to automatically recover the ASCS instance on new hardware.

Question 8

A company has an SAP S/4HANA system running on AWS with a custom backup solution that uses AWS Backup. The backup policy includes daily backups with a retention of 30 days. The operations team notices that backup jobs for the SAP application server are failing intermittently. What should the team do to troubleshoot the issue?

Accepted Answer

Review the CloudWatch Logs for the backup job to identify error messages.. When AWS Backup jobs fail intermittently, the first and most reliable troubleshooting step is to review CloudWatch Logs for the specific backup job, which contain detailed error messages (e.g., permission denied, snapshot limit exceeded, or resource not found). This directly identifies the root cause rather than guessing at configuration changes.

Answer

Verify that the IAM role used by AWS Backup has sufficient permissions.

Answer

Switch to using SAP HANA Studio for backups.

Answer

Increase the backup frequency to capture more recovery points.

Question 9

An operations team is planning a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for an SAP system on AWS. The system includes SAP HANA database and application servers. The DR site must have a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which THREE components are essential for this DR strategy? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation templates to provision the DR infrastructure. Option A is correct because AWS CloudFormation templates allow the DR infrastructure (VPC, subnets, EC2 instances, security groups, etc.) to be provisioned quickly and consistently in the DR region, which is essential to meet the 2-hour RTO by automating recovery rather than manually rebuilding the environment. Option C is correct because Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication continuously copies SAP backup files to the DR region, ensuring recent backups are available there and helping satisfy the 15-minute RPO for recovery of the SAP HANA database and application data. Option E is correct because cross-region replication of EBS snapshots for SAP HANA data volumes provides a recent, regionally separate copy of the database storage that can be restored in the DR region, which is necessary to recover HANA within the RPO/RTO targets. Option B is not essential for a cross-region DR strategy because Multi-AZ deployment only protects against a single Availability Zone failure within one region and does not provide cross-region disaster recovery. Option D is not essential as a DR component because Route 53 health checks and failover routing only redirect traffic after a failover decision; they do not themselves provision the DR infrastructure or replicate the SAP HANA data and backups needed to meet the RTO and RPO.

Answer

Multi-AZ deployment of the SAP application servers

Answer

Amazon Route 53 health checks and failover routing

Question 10

A company is running SAP on AWS and wants to implement a centralized logging solution for all SAP components. The solution must be scalable and cost-effective. Which TWO services should the company use? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Amazon CloudWatch Logs (option C) is correct because it provides a centralized, scalable log management service where SAP components (ABAP, Java, HANA, OS logs) can stream logs via the CloudWatch agent, enabling real-time monitoring, metric filters, and alarms without managing infrastructure. Amazon S3 (option E) is correct because it is the cost-effective, highly durable, and virtually unlimited storage tier for long-term log retention and archival, and CloudWatch Logs can export or stream log data directly to S3 for cheap storage and later analysis. Together, CloudWatch Logs handles ingestion and real-time visibility while S3 handles durable, low-cost retention, satisfying both scalability and cost-effectiveness. Amazon Athena (option A) is only a query engine over data in S3 and does not itself collect or centralize logs, so it is not a logging solution component. Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose (option B) is a delivery service for streaming data and, while it can forward logs to S3, it is not required here since CloudWatch Logs already provides native subscription/export to S3. Amazon EFS (option D) is a shared file system for compute workloads, not a centralized log aggregation or archival service.

Answer

Amazon Athena

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Question 11

An operations team uses this IAM policy for a role assumed by SAP administrators. An administrator tries to stop a production SAP HANA instance in the us-west-2 region but receives an access denied error. What is the cause?

Accepted Answer

The Deny statement with a condition on aws:RequestedRegion prevents actions outside us-east-1.. The cause is that the Deny statement includes a condition on aws:RequestedRegion that prevents actions outside us-east-1. Since the administrator is trying to stop an instance in us-west-2, the Deny statement explicitly blocks the action, resulting in access denied. The Allow statement may permit the action, but the explicit Deny overrides any Allow.

Answer

The Allow statement's resource ARN specifies us-east-1, but the instance is in us-west-2.

Answer

The Allow statement only permits stopping instances with the tag Environment=production, and the instance does not have that tag.

Answer

The Deny statement requires the resource to have a specific tag, which is missing.

Question 12

An SAP HANA database administrator reviews the above CLI output for a data volume. The database team reports high write latency. What is the most likely performance bottleneck?

Accepted Answer

The volume is provisioned with too many IOPS for its size, exceeding the maximum IOPS/GB ratio.. The correct answer is D: the volume is provisioned with too many IOPS for its size, exceeding the maximum IOPS/GB ratio. For EBS gp2 volumes, the baseline IOPS is 3 IOPS/GB, so a volume smaller than 33.33 GiB cannot sustain 100 IOPS; if the CLI output shows a small volume with a high provisioned IOPS value, the volume is capped at its maximum IOPS/GB ratio and cannot deliver the requested performance, causing the high write latency. Option A is not supported by the scenario because EBS optimization affects instance-level bandwidth, not the volume's internal IOPS/GB limit, and no instance type is given. Option B is incorrect because DeleteOnTermination is a lifecycle attribute and has no effect on write performance. Option C is incorrect because EBS encryption does not degrade write performance in a way that would cause this bottleneck.

Answer

The volume is attached to an instance that does not support EBS optimization.

Answer

The volume has DeleteOnTermination enabled, which affects write performance.

Answer

The volume is not encrypted, causing performance degradation.

Question 13

A company has an SAP system running on AWS with a production database on an RDS for SAP ASE instance. The operations team needs to perform a minor version upgrade of the database engine. The upgrade must be applied with minimal downtime. The team has a maintenance window scheduled for the upcoming weekend. Which action should the team take to apply the upgrade?

Accepted Answer

Enable auto minor version upgrade on the DB instance and let the upgrade occur during the maintenance window.. Enabling auto minor version upgrade on the DB instance (A) allows AWS to apply the minor version upgrade automatically during the defined maintenance window, which minimizes downtime and operational effort. This is the recommended approach for minor version upgrades on RDS for SAP ASE, as it aligns with the scheduled maintenance window and avoids manual intervention.

Answer

Manually upgrade the DB instance using the AWS Management Console immediately.

Answer

Modify the DB instance to specify the new engine version and apply immediately.

Answer

Create a new DB instance with the new version and migrate the data.

Question 14

An SAP Basis administrator notices that the SAP system's response time is increasing during peak hours. The system uses an SAP NetWeaver application server on EC2 and an SAP HANA database on a separate EC2 instance. CloudWatch metrics show that the application server's CPU utilization is at 80% and the database server's CPU is at 30%. The application server is an m5.2xlarge, and the database is an r5.2xlarge. The administrator checks the SAP work process overview and sees that all dialog work processes are busy. What should the administrator do to resolve the performance issue?

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

Accepted Answer

The security group for the RDS instance does not allow inbound traffic on the HANA internal communication port (e.g., 3xx18).. SAP HANA uses multiple ports for internal communication. While port 3xx17 (SQL) is allowed, the missing inbound rule for the HANA internal communication port (e.g., 3xx18) causes intermittent connection timeouts. Option A is incorrect because RDS DNS names are stable and do not change intermittently. Option B is incorrect because network ACLs are stateless, but the problem states both inbound and outbound are allowed on ephemeral ports, so return traffic is not blocked. Option D is incorrect because route tables within a VPC use local routes for database traffic, and NAT gateways do not affect intra-VPC traffic.

Answer

The RDS instance's DNS name resolves to a different IP address intermittently.

Answer

The network ACL is stateful and blocking return traffic.

Answer

The application server's subnet has a route table that points to a NAT gateway instead of the database subnet.

Question 15

A company runs SAP BusinessObjects on AWS. The system includes a web application server and a CMS database on separate EC2 instances. The operations team receives alerts that the CMS database server's EBS volume is approaching its maximum capacity. The volume is a gp3 EBS volume with 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput. Upon investigation, the team finds that the volume is 90% full and write performance has degraded. The application is experiencing slow response times. What should the team do to resolve the issue without downtime?

Accepted Answer

Expand the EBS volume size and extend the file system.. The core issue is that the gp3 volume is 90% full, which degrades write performance because EBS volumes rely on free space for internal operations like garbage collection and wear leveling. Expanding the volume size and extending the file system directly addresses the capacity problem and restores performance without downtime. AWS allows online volume modification for EBS, and the file system can be grown online for most Linux file systems (e.g., ext4, XFS) using commands like resize2fs or xfs_growfs. This is the only option that solves the root cause—insufficient capacity—while meeting the no-downtime requirement.

Answer

Move the database to an instance store volume for better performance.

Answer

Migrate the database to an io2 Block Express volume with higher performance.

Answer

Increase the IOPS and throughput of the existing volume.