PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 13 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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.. Option B is correct. By placing the database instance in a placement group with the application servers, you can ensure low-latency connectivity. Then you can stop the instance, change the instance type to r5.32xlarge if available in another AZ, but since it's not available in current AZ, the best approach is to use a larger instance type in the same family that is available. However, the question states the next larger is r5.32xlarge but not available. So the correct action is to change to an available larger instance in another AZ. But the option B says 'Move to a larger instance in a different AZ with a placement group' which ensures low latency. Option A is wrong because increasing application servers does not reduce database CPU. Option C is wrong because moving to a different instance family may require SAP re-certification. Option D is wrong because using Auto Scaling for database is not supported for SAP HANA.

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 2

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.. Option C is correct. Amazon EFS provides a shared NFS filesystem that can be mounted from multiple instances across AZs, offering high availability and consistent performance. Option A is wrong because EBS volumes cannot be attached to multiple instances across AZs (Multi-Attach only works within same AZ). Option B is wrong because S3 is object storage, not a filesystem. Option D is wrong because Local SSDs are ephemeral and not shared.

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.

Question 3

A company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS and wants to implement a disaster recovery (DR) solution with a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour. The primary site is in us-east-1, and DR site will be in us-west-2. The database is running on SAP ASE. The company wants to minimize changes to the existing SAP environment and avoid complex replication setups. What is the most suitable DR approach?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup to schedule snapshots of the EBS volumes and copy them to the DR region.. Option A is correct. Using AWS Backup to take frequent snapshots of the database and application volumes and copying them to the DR region can meet the RPO of 1 hour if snapshots are taken every hour. Restoring from snapshots can be automated to meet the RTO. Option B is wrong because Database Migration Service is for ongoing replication, not backup/restore. Option C is wrong because SAP ASE native replication requires significant changes and licensing. Option D is wrong because Multi-AZ is for high availability within a region, not DR across regions.

Answer

Deploy a Multi-AZ database in the primary region.

Answer

Set up SAP ASE native replication to a standby database in the DR region.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service to continuously replicate data to the DR region.

Question 4

A company is running a business-critical SAP HANA database on an m5.24xlarge EC2 instance. The database stores 3 TB of data on EBS gp3 volumes. The system experiences high latency during peak hours. Which configuration change would most effectively reduce latency without increasing costs significantly?

Accepted Answer

Migrate the EBS volumes to io2 Block Express volumes with the same capacity.. Option B is correct because io2 Block Express volumes provide higher IOPS and lower latency than gp3, which is critical for SAP HANA. Option A is wrong because increasing gp3 volume size does not guarantee latency reduction. Option C is wrong because moving to a larger instance increases costs significantly. Option D is wrong because increasing Provisioned IOPS on gp3 increases costs without addressing the underlying latency issue of gp3.

Answer

Increase the Provisioned IOPS of the gp3 volumes to the maximum supported.

Answer

Move the database to a larger instance type like x1e.32xlarge with more memory.

Answer

Increase the gp3 volume size to 4 TB to gain more baseline IOPS.

Question 5

An SAP system running on AWS is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues between the SAP application servers and the database server. Both are in the same VPC but different subnets. The security groups and network ACLs are correctly configured. The issue occurs only during peak hours. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Network ACLs do not have rules to allow ephemeral ports for return traffic.. Option D is correct because network ACLs are stateless and require explicit rules for both inbound and outbound traffic, and ephemeral ports are often missed. Option A is wrong because NACL rules are evaluated before security groups. Option B is wrong because VPC peering is not mentioned. Option C is wrong because security groups are stateful and would not cause asymmetric traffic issues.

Answer

Security group outbound rules are blocking return traffic.

Answer

The VPC peering connection is throttling traffic.

Answer

Security group inbound rules are misconfigured.

Question 6

A company wants to automate the backup of its SAP HANA database to Amazon S3. The database is running on an EC2 instance with a 500 GB gp3 volume. The backup should be encrypted at rest in S3. What is the most efficient way to achieve this with minimal operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use the SAP HANA Backup and Restore integration with Amazon S3 to back up directly to S3 buckets, enabling default S3 encryption.. Option A is correct because SAP HANA Backup and Restore integration with S3 is native and handles encryption. Option B is wrong because it adds an extra step. Option C is wrong because S3 replication does not replace the backup process. Option D is wrong because AWS Backup supports HANA but requires additional setup and may not be as efficient as native integration.

Answer

Back up to an EBS snapshot, then copy the snapshot to S3 using AWS Backup.

Answer

Schedule an AWS Backup plan to back up the EC2 instance and its EBS volumes.

Answer

Use AWS Storage Gateway to back up the database to S3, then enable S3 encryption.

Question 7

An SAP Basis team is planning to migrate an SAP ERP system from on-premises to AWS. The system currently uses Oracle Database and runs on a physical server with 256 GB RAM. The team wants to minimize downtime and ensure the migration is supported by SAP. Which AWS service or feature should they use to perform the migration?

Accepted Answer

Use SAP's Software Provisioning Manager (SWPM) to perform a homogeneous system copy to AWS.. Option C is correct because SAP supports HSR for system replication with HANA, and for Oracle, using SAP's own migration tools (e.g., SAP DMO) or homogenous migration is supported. Option A is wrong because VM Import/Export is not SAP-specific and may cause issues. Option B is wrong because AWS DMS is not certified for SAP migrations. Option D is wrong because CloudEndure is not SAP-certified.

Answer

Use AWS VM Import/Export to migrate the physical server as an AMI.

Answer

Use AWS CloudEndure Migration to replicate the entire server to AWS.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate the Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle.

Question 8

An SAP administrator is trying to set up an AWS CLI script that queries EC2 instance metadata. The script runs on an EC2 instance with an IAM role attached. The IAM role has the following policy:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "ec2:DescribeInstances",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

What is the most likely cause of the error?

Accepted Answer

The instance does not have an IAM instance profile associated, or the profile name does not match the role name.. Option D is correct because the error message shows the principal is 'SAP', which suggests the instance profile name is 'SAP', but the policy is attached to the role, and the instance profile must have the same name as the role or be correctly associated. Option A is wrong because the policy allows all resources. Option B is wrong because the error is about authorization, not region mismatch. Option C is wrong because the error shows the action is ec2:DescribeInstances.

Answer

The IAM policy does not specify a resource ARN.

Answer

The IAM role does not have the ec2:DescribeInstances action allowed.

Answer

The AWS CLI is not configured with the correct region.

Question 9

A company is running SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to implement high availability for the ASCS instance. Which AWS service can be used to monitor and automatically restart the ASCS instance if it fails?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch with EC2 Auto Recovery. Option B is correct because Amazon CloudWatch can monitor instance status and trigger an Auto Recovery action to restart the instance in the same Availability Zone. Option A is wrong because ELB is for traffic distribution, not instance recovery. Option C is wrong because Lambda can perform actions but not directly restart instances without additional setup; CloudWatch Auto Recovery is simpler. Option D is wrong because EC2 Auto Scaling is for scaling groups, not single instance recovery.

Answer

EC2 Auto Scaling group

Answer

AWS Lambda with a scheduled function

Answer

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Question 10

An SAP system running on AWS is experiencing high CPU utilization on the database server. The database is SAP HANA running on an r5.8xlarge instance. Which metric in Amazon CloudWatch would best indicate whether the CPU is being consumed by the HANA process or by other OS processes?

Accepted Answer

Custom metrics collected by the CloudWatch agent for the hdbindexserver process. Option D is correct because CloudWatch Agent can collect per-process CPU metrics. Option A is wrong because CPUUtilization is aggregate. Option B is wrong because CPUCreditUsage is for burstable instances. Option C is wrong because the HANA metric is not a standard CloudWatch metric.

Answer

CPUUtilization metric from the EC2 instance

Answer

HANA CPU metric from SAP HANA CloudWatch integration

Answer

CPUCreditUsage metric

Question 11

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the system can survive a single Availability Zone failure. The SAP HANA database is 1.5 TB in size. What is the most cost-effective high availability solution that meets SAP's support requirements?

Accepted Answer

Implement SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones.. Option D is correct because HANA System Replication in scale-up with two nodes in different AZs is supported and cost-effective. Option A is wrong because it does not protect against AZ failure. Option B is wrong because Multi-AZ RDS is not for HANA. Option C is wrong because Multi-AZ is for RDS, not HANA.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA on Amazon RDS for SAP HANA in Multi-AZ.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for the SAP HANA database.

Answer

Use a single EC2 instance with EBS snapshots taken every 5 minutes.

Question 12

An administrator is setting up an SAP system on AWS and needs to assign a static private IP address to the SAP application server. Which AWS resource should be used to ensure the private IP address remains the same even after an instance stop/start?

Accepted Answer

Elastic Network Interface (ENI) with a primary private IP. Option C is correct because an Elastic Network Interface (ENI) retains its private IP address and can be attached to an instance. Option A is wrong because Elastic IP is for public IPs. Option B is wrong because a secondary private IP on an ENI can change if not attached. Option D is wrong because a VPC endpoint is for connecting to AWS services, not for instance IPs.

Answer

VPC endpoint

Answer

Secondary private IP address on the primary network interface

Answer

Elastic IP address

Question 13

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS and wants to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The primary site is in us-east-1, and the DR site is in us-west-2. Which TWO AWS features should be combined to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication for database backups. Options A and C are correct: S3 Cross-Region Replication provides asynchronous replication of backups, and EC2 AMI Copy can be used to copy AMIs to the DR region. Option B is wrong because EBS snapshots are not automatically cross-region; they need to be copied. Option D is wrong because CloudEndure may not meet RPO/RTO. Option E is wrong because RDS is not used for SAP.

Answer

Amazon RDS Multi-Region replication

Answer

AWS CloudEndure Disaster Recovery

Answer

Amazon EBS Multi-AZ snapshots

Question 14

A company is planning to migrate its SAP HANA database to AWS. The database is 5 TB in size and requires high IOPS for online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. Which THREE AWS storage options are suitable for SAP HANA data volumes? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

EC2 instance store (NVMe SSD). Options A, B, and D are correct: io2 Block Express provides high IOPS, instance store provides very low latency, and gp3 can be used for less critical data. Option C is wrong because Amazon EFS is not supported for HANA data. Option E is wrong because S3 is not block storage.

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EFS

Question 15

An organization runs SAP on AWS and wants to encrypt all data at rest for the SAP HANA database. The encryption keys must be managed by the customer and rotated annually. Which THREE AWS services can be used together to meet these requirements? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS encryption. Options A, B, and C are correct: AWS KMS manages customer master keys, CloudHSM provides hardware security module, and EBS encryption uses KMS. Option D is wrong because S3 encryption can use KMS but not directly for EBS. Option E is wrong because ACM is for SSL/TLS certificates.

Answer

Amazon S3 server-side encryption

Answer

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)