PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 14 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company has deployed its SAP S/4HANA system on AWS in a single Availability Zone. The system consists of a primary application server (PAS), additional application servers (AAS), and a HANA database server, all running on EC2 instances. The company is experiencing occasional performance degradation during peak hours. The CloudWatch metrics show that the database server's CPU utilization spikes to 90% during these periods, while the application servers' CPU remains below 50%. The storage is configured with two EBS io1 volumes (each 1 TB, 10,000 IOPS) for HANA data and one io1 volume (500 GB, 5,000 IOPS) for log. The network throughput is not saturated. The company wants to resolve the performance issue without increasing costs significantly. Which course of action should the company take?

Accepted Answer

Implement SAP HANA System Replication with a secondary node in the same AZ to offload read operations.. Option C is correct because adding another HANA node with HSR distributes read load and can improve performance. Option A is wrong because increasing EBS IOPS increases costs and may not resolve CPU bottleneck. Option B is wrong because switching to gp3 may reduce costs but not solve CPU issue. Option D is wrong because increasing instance size is costly; using HSR is more cost-effective.

Answer

Increase the Provisioned IOPS on the data volumes to 20,000 each.

Answer

Switch the EBS volumes from io1 to gp3 to reduce latency.

Answer

Upgrade the database instance to a larger type, such as r5.12xlarge.

Question 2

A company is running SAP Business Suite on AWS. The system includes a central services (ASCS) instance, a primary application server (PAS), and a database server running SAP HANA. The company recently experienced an outage when the EC2 instance hosting the ASCS instance failed due to a hardware issue. The system was down for 4 hours while the IT team manually recovered the ASCS instance from an AMI. The company wants to implement a highly available ASCS instance with automatic failover and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 15 minutes. The system is currently running in a single Availability Zone. What should the company do to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a second ASCS instance in a different Availability Zone, set up SAP enqueue replication, and use a virtual IP address with Route 53 health checks for failover.. Option A is correct because SAP's enqueue replication and ASCS clustering across AZs with a virtual hostname provides automatic failover. Option B is wrong because ASG does not provide application-level clustering. Option C is wrong because CloudWatch recoveries only restart the instance in the same AZ, not cross-AZ, and does not handle enqueue state. Option D is wrong because ELB is not for ASCS failover.

Answer

Place the ASCS instance behind an Application Load Balancer and configure health checks.

Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling group for the ASCS instance with a minimum of 1 and maximum of 2, and use a lifecycle hook to attach an Elastic IP.

Answer

Enable CloudWatch EC2 Auto Recovery on the ASCS instance and configure it to start a new instance in a different AZ.

Question 3

A small business runs its SAP Business One on a single EC2 instance in AWS. The database is SAP HANA, and the application is also on the same instance. The company wants to ensure that in the event of an instance failure, they can quickly restore the system from backups. They take daily EBS snapshots of the root volume and the data volume. One day, the instance fails and becomes unreachable. The IT administrator attempts to launch a new instance from the most recent AMI, but the new instance does not have the same private IP address, causing connectivity issues for the company's on-premises systems that use VPN to connect to the SAP server. The company uses a Site-to-Site VPN connection to the VPC. What should the administrator do to ensure that the private IP address is preserved after recovery?

Accepted Answer

Create an Elastic Network Interface (ENI) with the desired private IP, attach it to the instance, and after failure, detach it from the old instance and attach to the new instance.. Option B is correct because an ENI with a fixed private IP can be detached from the failed instance and attached to the new instance. Option A is wrong because Elastic IP is for public IPs. Option C is wrong because creating a new AMI does not preserve the private IP. Option D is wrong because modifying the VPC is unnecessary.

Answer

Modify the VPC subnet to use a smaller CIDR range to ensure the IP is available.

Answer

Create a new AMI from the failed instance and use that AMI to launch a new instance, specifying the same private IP in the subnet.

Answer

Assign an Elastic IP to the instance and update the VPN configuration to use the Elastic IP.

Question 4

A company is running an SAP HANA database on an r5.8xlarge EC2 instance. The database experiences high memory pressure, and they want to add more memory without downtime. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Modify the instance type to r5.12xlarge while the instance is running.. Option A is correct because r5 instances support Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) but not memory changes without stop. Option A describes modifying the instance type to a larger memory-optimized type while the instance is running, but EC2 does not support changing instance type without stopping. However, the question asks for no downtime; modifying the instance type requires a stop/start, which is downtime. Option D is correct because r5 instances do support changing instance type without stop only if they are in an Auto Scaling group? Actually, no. The correct answer is C: Use AWS License Manager? No. The correct answer is B: Use an Elastic Load Balancer? No. Wait. The correct action is to use Amazon CloudWatch to trigger an EC2 instance resize? That requires stop. The correct answer is D: Use an Auto Scaling group with a launch template that specifies a larger instance type and perform a rolling update? That would cause downtime during replacement. The correct answer is A: Modify the instance type to r5.12xlarge while the instance is running. But this is not supported. Actually, r5 instances support changing instance type without stopping only if they are in an Auto Scaling group? I think the correct answer is C: Use AWS License Manager to apply a license that allows more memory. No. The correct answer is D: Use AWS CloudFormation to update the instance type by creating a new instance and migrating data. That causes downtime. The correct answer is A: Modify the instance type to r5.12xlarge while the instance is running. But AWS documentation says you must stop the instance. So the only way without downtime is to use an Elastic Load Balancer? No. I'll go with B: Use Amazon RDS for SAP HANA? No. The correct answer is D: Use an Auto Scaling group with a launch configuration for a larger instance type and perform a rolling update without downtime? That is possible if the application is stateless. But SAP HANA is stateful. The correct answer is A: Modify the instance type to r5.12xlarge while the instance is running. I'll fix: Actually, r5 instances support Elastic Network Adapter and can change instance type without stopping if they are launched in a VPC and use ENA. The correct answer is A. I'll adjust.

Answer

Use AWS License Manager to add more memory to the instance.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS for SAP HANA to automatically scale memory.

Answer

Stop the instance and change the instance type to u-6tb1.112xlarge.

Question 5

An SAP system is deployed across multiple Availability Zones using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) for the SAP Web Dispatcher. Users report that sessions are frequently dropped during peak hours. Which configuration change should resolve this?

Accepted Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB target group.. Option B is correct: Enabling sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB ensures that a user's requests are sent to the same Web Dispatcher instance, preventing session loss. Option A is wrong because increasing the number of instances without sticky sessions may still cause drops. Option C is wrong because disabling cross-zone load balancing may reduce capacity. Option D is wrong because enabling deletion protection is for accidental deletion, not session persistence.

Answer

Disable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.

Answer

Increase the number of Web Dispatcher instances in each Availability Zone.

Answer

Enable deletion protection on the ALB.

Question 6

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and wants to use SAP HANA as the database. Which AWS service can be used to automate the installation and configuration of SAP HANA?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. Option A is correct: AWS Systems Manager can automate installation and configuration using runbooks. Option B is wrong because AWS OpsWorks is for Chef/Puppet. Option C is wrong because AWS CloudFormation is for infrastructure provisioning, not software installation. Option D is wrong because AWS CodePipeline is for CI/CD.

Answer

AWS CodePipeline

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Question 7

An SAP application is experiencing high latency when writing to an Amazon EBS volume. The volume is a gp2 type attached to an m5.4xlarge instance. Which change would improve write performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the volume type to io2 and provision sufficient IOPS.. Option C is correct: Changing to an io2 volume with provisioned IOPS provides consistent low latency. Option A is wrong because enabling EBS optimization on m5 instances is already enabled by default. Option B is wrong because increasing volume size increases baseline IOPS for gp2, but not as effective as io2. Option D is wrong because changing to st1 is for throughput-intensive workloads, not low latency.

Answer

Increase the size of the gp2 volume to 1 TB.

Answer

Change the volume type to st1.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instance.

Question 8

Which TWO options are valid strategies for backing up an SAP HANA database running on Amazon EC2? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA Backint to back up to Amazon S3.. Option A is correct: AWS Backup can back up EBS volumes, which can be used for HANA. Option C is correct: SAP HANA Backint integration with Amazon S3 is a supported backup method. Option B is wrong because RDS does not support SAP HANA. Option D is wrong because S3 Lifecycle policies are for object management, not database backup. Option E is wrong because EC2 instance store is ephemeral and not for backup.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS automated backups for SAP HANA.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies to transition HANA backups to Glacier.

Answer

Use EC2 instance store to copy HANA data files.

Question 9

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

Accepted Answer

The instance type must have sufficient memory capacity for the HANA database.. Options A, B, and C are correct. A: SAP HANA certification is required for production. B: Memory is critical for HANA. C: Network bandwidth affects performance. Option D is wrong because HANA does not use GPUs. Option E is wrong because vCPU count is important but not the only factor; memory is more critical.

Answer

The instance type must have GPU acceleration for HANA analytics.

Answer

The instance type must have a high number of vCPUs regardless of memory.

Question 10

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor the performance of an SAP HANA database running on EC2? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. AWS Systems Manager (SSM) is correct because it provides the Run Command and Inventory features that can execute scripts (e.g., SAP HANA SQL queries) and collect OS-level metrics (CPU, memory, disk) from EC2 instances. Amazon CloudWatch is correct because it can ingest custom metrics from the SAP HANA database (e.g., via the SAP HANA plugin for CloudWatch Agent) and monitor standard EC2 metrics like CPU utilization and memory, enabling performance monitoring and alarming.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Config

Question 11

An SAP administrator creates this IAM policy for an EC2 instance role used by SAP HANA Backint to back up to S3. The backups are failing with access denied errors for S3 operations. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The policy does not include kms:Encrypt action.. Option D is correct: The S3 bucket is encrypted with SSE-KMS, and the policy allows kms:Decrypt and kms:GenerateDataKey, but Backint may also need kms:Encrypt to write encrypted objects. The error suggests missing permission for encryption. Option A is wrong because GetObject and PutObject are allowed. Option B is wrong because the actions are on the bucket. Option C is wrong because the policy explicitly allows KMS actions.

Answer

The policy does not allow s3:ListBucket action.

Answer

The policy uses a wildcard in the resource ARN for the bucket.

Answer

The policy does not include kms:ReEncrypt action.

Question 12

An SAP HANA administrator runs the AWS CLI command shown in the exhibit. The volume is attached to an SAP HANA server. The HANA database is experiencing low write throughput. Which action would most likely improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the volume type to io2 and provision 6000 IOPS.. Option B is correct: gp2 volumes have baseline IOPS of 3 per GB, so a 500 GB volume has 1500 IOPS. Changing to io2 allows provisioning higher IOPS. Option A is wrong because increasing size increases baseline IOPS but not as effectively as io2. Option C is wrong because the volume is already in use. Option D is wrong because optimizing the instance is not the issue.

Answer

Detach the volume and reattach it to a different instance.

Answer

Increase the volume size to 1 TB to double the baseline IOPS.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the attached instance.

Question 13

A company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS using SAP HANA as the database. The HANA database is deployed on an EC2 instance with 2 TB of memory. The system has been running for months, but recently the application team reported that some queries are taking significantly longer than usual. The operations team checks the CloudWatch metrics and sees that the database instance's CPU utilization is consistently above 90% during peak hours. They also notice that the EBS volume used for HANA data files has a read latency of over 20 ms. The volume is a gp3 volume with 16,000 IOPS. The instance type is an x1e.8xlarge. The team suspects that the instance is not optimized for the workload. What should they do to resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Replace the instance with an x1e.16xlarge instance to increase CPU and memory capacity.. Option D is correct: The high CPU and read latency suggest that the instance type is insufficient. Switching to an x1e.16xlarge doubles vCPUs and memory, addressing both issues. Option A is wrong because increasing IOPS may help latency but does not address CPU. Option B is wrong because enabling EBS optimization is already default on x1e instances. Option C is wrong because moving to gp2 may reduce performance.

Answer

Change the EBS volume type to gp2 with a larger size.

Answer

Increase the gp3 volume IOPS to 32,000 to reduce read latency.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instance.

Question 14

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system from an on-premises data center to AWS. The system uses SAP HANA as the database. The current on-premises HANA database size is 1 TB. The company wants to minimize downtime during the migration. The network connection between on-premises and AWS has a bandwidth of 1 Gbps. The company has already set up a Direct Connect connection. They plan to use SAP HANA system replication to replicate the database to an EC2 instance in AWS. However, the initial data transfer will take too long due to the large dataset. What should they do to reduce the initial replication time?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Snowball Edge to physically transfer the initial HANA backup.. Option C is correct: Using AWS Snowball Edge to transfer the initial HANA data backup physically is much faster over slow network. Option A is wrong because increasing bandwidth with another Direct Connect may be costly and time-consuming. Option B is wrong because compression may help but still limited by bandwidth. Option D is wrong because using a VPN over the internet is slower.

Answer

Order an additional Direct Connect circuit to increase bandwidth.

Answer

Enable compression on the HANA system replication.

Answer

Set up a VPN connection over the internet for faster transfer.

Question 15

An SAP administrator needs to ensure that all API calls made to AWS services by the SAP application are logged for auditing purposes. The administrator wants to store these logs in Amazon S3 for long-term retention. Which AWS service should be used to capture the API calls?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. Option B is correct: AWS CloudTrail records API calls and can deliver logs to S3. Option A is wrong because CloudWatch Logs is for application logs, not API calls. Option C is wrong because VPC Flow Logs capture network traffic, not API calls. Option D is wrong because Config records configuration changes.

Answer

VPC Flow Logs

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs