PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 13 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing an EC2 instance type for an SAP HANA production system? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Amount of memory (RAM) required.. SAP HANA is an in-memory database that loads all data into RAM for processing, making memory the primary determinant of instance sizing. The amount of RAM required directly dictates the EC2 instance family and size, as SAP HANA certified instances are specifically validated for memory-to-vCPU ratios and total memory capacity.

Answer

GPU capabilities for parallel processing.

Answer

Support for EBS optimization.

Question 2

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor SAP system availability and send notifications when a system goes down? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Events. Amazon CloudWatch Events (now part of Amazon EventBridge) can monitor SAP system health by capturing state changes or custom events emitted by SAP via the SAP Cloud Platform Integration or AWS Lambda, and route them to targets like SNS or Lambda for notification. Amazon CloudWatch Alarms can monitor SAP-specific metrics (e.g., from SAP Host Agent or custom metrics published via the CloudWatch agent) and trigger actions such as sending an SNS notification when a threshold (e.g., system down) is breached. Together, they provide event-driven and metric-based monitoring and alerting for SAP availability.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

Amazon S3 event notifications

Answer

AWS Config

Question 3

A company is running an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance with a large amount of memory. The system is experiencing performance issues during peak loads. Which AWS service should be used to capture detailed performance metrics for analysis?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it provides detailed, customizable performance metrics for EC2 instances, including memory utilization, CPU, disk I/O, and network throughput. For SAP HANA, which is memory-intensive, CloudWatch can capture custom metrics (e.g., via the CloudWatch Agent) to monitor memory pressure and identify bottlenecks during peak loads, enabling performance analysis and scaling decisions.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Question 4

A company is migrating an SAP system to AWS and needs to ensure high availability for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) instance. Which architecture should be used to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Use a cluster of EC2 instances across two Availability Zones with shared storage and a cluster manager.. SAP Central Services (ASCS) requires a high-availability cluster that can fail over between physical hosts while maintaining shared storage and a quorum mechanism. Deploying a cluster of EC2 instances across two Availability Zones with shared storage (e.g., Amazon EFS or FSx for NetApp ONTAP) and a cluster manager (e.g., Pacemaker) meets this requirement by providing automatic failover and data consistency. This architecture aligns with SAP's official high-availability guidelines for AWS, which mandate multi-AZ deployment to tolerate an entire AZ failure.

Answer

Deploy the ASCS on a single large EC2 instance with a Multi-Attach EBS volume.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group with a launch configuration for ASCS.

Answer

Deploy two EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone with a replicated file system.

Question 5

An SAP administrator uses an IAM role attached to an EC2 instance to perform backups. The backup script fails when trying to write to an S3 bucket and create EBS snapshots. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The trust policy does not include the EC2 service principal.. The most likely cause is that the trust policy of the IAM role does not include the EC2 service principal (ec2.amazonaws.com). Without this, the EC2 instance cannot assume the role, causing all AWS API calls from the backup script to fail, including writing to S3 and creating EBS snapshots. Options A and C only affect specific actions, and D incorrectly includes s3:ListBucket as a requirement.

Answer

The S3 bucket policy denies all writes from this role.

Answer

The role does not have permission to create snapshots due to an explicit deny.

Answer

The policy lacks 's3:ListBucket' and 'ec2:CreateSnapshot' requires volume ARN.

Question 6

A company wants to automate the creation of an SAP application server in AWS. Which AWS service is best suited for this task?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is best suited for automating the creation of an SAP application server because it allows you to define the entire infrastructure as code (IaC) using a template (JSON or YAML). This enables consistent, repeatable provisioning of EC2 instances, security groups, storage, and networking configurations required for SAP, and supports integration with AWS Systems Manager for post-deployment configuration.

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Question 7

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing high latency between the application server and the database server. Both are in the same VPC but different subnets. What is the most effective way to reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Place both instances in a placement group in the same Availability Zone.. Placing both the SAP application server and database server in a placement group within the same Availability Zone ensures they are in close physical proximity, often on the same rack or within the same cluster. This minimizes network hops and reduces latency to single-digit microseconds, which is critical for SAP's high-throughput, low-latency communication between application and database layers.

Answer

Move the database to a different Availability Zone.

Answer

Use a VPN connection between subnets.

Answer

Increase the instance size of both servers.

Question 8

A company needs to set up a disaster recovery solution for SAP on AWS with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours. Which strategy is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Use cross-region backup and restore with AWS Backup.. Cross-region backup and restore with AWS Backup is the most appropriate strategy because it meets both the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 2 hours for SAP on AWS. AWS Backup supports continuous backups for SAP HANA databases with a 15-minute RPO via Backint integration, and restoring from a cross-region backup can complete within 2 hours for typical SAP workloads. This approach provides the required recovery point and time objectives while maintaining data durability across AWS Regions.

Answer

Deploy all SAP components in a single AWS Region.

Answer

Use Multi-AZ deployment for the database.

Answer

Set up a pilot light environment with database replication.

Question 9

An SAP system is running on AWS and needs to be migrated from a current generation instance (r3) to a newer generation (r5). What is the recommended process to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Stop the instance, change the instance type, and start the instance.. Stopping the instance is required to change the instance type for EC2 instances that are not configured for 'Stop/Start' hibernation or Nitro-based instance compatibility. For SAP systems running on current-generation instances (r3), which are Xen-based, a stop is necessary to modify the instance type to r5 (Nitro-based). This process minimizes downtime by allowing the instance to be stopped, changed, and started in a controlled manner, typically taking only a few minutes.

Answer

Modify the instance type while the instance is running.

Answer

Create an AMI of the r3 instance and launch an r5 instance from it.

Answer

Launch a new r5 instance and migrate the SAP system.

Question 10

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs. They notice that inter-VPC traffic is being dropped. What is a likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Missing routes in the VPC route tables pointing to the Transit Gateway.. AWS Transit Gateway requires explicit routes in each VPC's route table pointing to the Transit Gateway attachment ID for traffic to be forwarded between VPCs. Without these routes, the VPCs have no path to reach the Transit Gateway, causing inter-VPC traffic to be dropped at the VPC router level.

Answer

Security groups not allowing return traffic.

Answer

Transit Gateway does not support transitive routing.

Answer

Network ACLs blocking traffic.

Question 11

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor SAP system performance and send alerts? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is correct because it can monitor SAP system performance by collecting and tracking metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O from EC2 instances running SAP. It can also send alerts via CloudWatch Alarms when thresholds are breached, using actions like Amazon SNS notifications or Auto Scaling.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 12

Which THREE considerations are important when designing an SAP HANA multi-node (scale-out) deployment on AWS? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use a cluster placement group for low-latency network.. A cluster placement group provides low-latency network connectivity between EC2 instances by placing them in a single Availability Zone with non-blocking, fully bisectional bandwidth. For SAP HANA multi-node (scale-out) deployments, this low-latency, high-throughput network is essential for the internal communication between nodes, as HANA relies on fast inter-node data exchange for distributed queries and replication.

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach to share volumes between nodes.

Answer

Use a single large EC2 instance with many vCPUs.

Question 13

Which TWO AWS services can be used to store SAP backup data? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is correct because it provides a highly durable, scalable, and cost-effective object storage service that can be used to store SAP backup data, such as database backups from SAP HANA or SAP ASE, via native integration or third-party backup tools. SAP-certified backup solutions, including the SAP HANA Backup & Recovery tool, can directly write backups to S3 buckets using the S3 API, supporting standard storage classes for frequent access.

Answer

Amazon RDS

Answer

Amazon DynamoDB

Answer

Amazon EBS

Question 14

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a production database on an r5.24xlarge instance and 15 application servers on r5.4xlarge instances. The system has been stable for months. Recently, the database instance started experiencing high CPU utilization during peak hours, causing performance degradation. The company has reserved capacity for the database instance. The SAP team has already optimized the SQL queries and reduced the CPU usage by 20%, but the CPU still spikes to 95% during peak hours. The team is considering upgrading the database instance to a larger type. However, the next larger instance type (r5.32xlarge) is not available in the current Availability Zone. The company needs a solution that minimizes downtime and cost. What should be done?

Accepted Answer

Stop the database instance, change to a larger instance type in a different Availability Zone, and use a placement group with the application servers.. Stopping the database instance allows changing to a larger instance type. Since r5.32xlarge is not available in the current AZ, the instance must be moved to a different AZ where it is available. Note that cluster placement groups cannot span Availability Zones, so to use a placement group, the application servers would also need to be moved to the same AZ, increasing downtime. Therefore, the most cost-effective and minimally disruptive approach is to simply move the database instance to the new AZ and accept the minimal cross-AZ latency, which is acceptable for SAP workloads. This avoids the need to recertify a different instance family as in option B, and options C and D do not address the database bottleneck.

Answer

Migrate the database to a different instance family, such as x1e.32xlarge.

Answer

Use an Auto Scaling group to automatically scale the database instance.

Answer

Add more application servers to distribute the load.

Question 15

A company is deploying SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to ensure high availability for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) and Enqueue Replication Server (ERS). They plan to use a cluster manager (Pacemaker) with a shared filesystem. The cluster will span two Availability Zones. The storage for the shared filesystem must be highly available and provide consistent performance. What storage solution should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon EFS for the shared filesystem.. Amazon EFS provides a fully managed NFS filesystem that can be mounted from multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones, offering high availability and consistent performance for SAP Central Services (ASCS) and Enqueue Replication Server (ERS) shared filesystem. Option A is incorrect because Amazon S3 is object storage, not a POSIX-compliant filesystem, and cannot be used as a shared filesystem for SAP. Option B is incorrect because instance store volumes are ephemeral and local to each instance; they cannot be shared between nodes. Option C is incorrect because EBS Multi-Attach only supports attachment to multiple instances within the same Availability Zone, not across AZs, and has additional limitations for shared filesystem use.

Answer

Use an Amazon S3 bucket as the shared filesystem.

Answer

Use instance store volumes (Local SSDs) on each node.

Answer

Use an Amazon EBS volume with Multi-Attach enabled.