PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 21 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP NetWeaver application server on AWS uses an Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for the SAP global directory. Users report that application servers sometimes fail to start after a reboot, with errors indicating the file system is not available. The file system is in a different subnet than the application servers. What is the most likely cause and solution?

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

Accepted Answer

The security group for FSx does not allow inbound traffic from the application servers' security group on port 445; update the security group rules.. The most likely cause is that the security group attached to the FSx file system does not allow inbound SMB traffic (port 445) from the application servers. This would prevent the application servers from accessing the global directory, causing startup failures. Ensuring the security group rules permit traffic from the application servers' security group resolves the issue.

Answer

The application servers are in a different subnet and require a route table entry to the FSx file system's Elastic Network Interface; add a route to the FSx ENI.

Answer

The FSx file system is not joined to the same Active Directory domain as the application servers; rejoin the file system to the correct domain.

Answer

The application servers' DNS settings do not resolve the FSx file system's DNS name; configure the VPC DNS settings to enable DNS resolution and hostnames.

Question 2

A company is running SAP NetWeaver on AWS with multiple application servers behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). They need to ensure that the SAP GUI clients can connect to the system using a single hostname and that the load is distributed across all application servers. The company also wants to minimize downtime during maintenance. Which two configurations should they implement? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the ALB with a target group that includes all application server instances and enable sticky sessions.. Sticky sessions are required to maintain SAP GUI session state on a single application server. Connection draining ensures that during maintenance, existing sessions are allowed to complete before the server is removed from the target group, minimizing downtime. Together, these configurations provide a seamless experience with a single ALB hostname.

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with a TCP listener on port 3200 and a target group of application servers.

Answer

Deploy the application servers across multiple Availability Zones and use an ALB with cross-zone load balancing enabled.

Answer

Use Amazon Route 53 with a multivalue answer routing policy to distribute traffic to the application servers.

Question 3

A company is running SAP HANA on an Amazon EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes. The company needs to ensure that the volumes are consistently attached and mounted in the correct order after a reboot or instance recovery. The company wants to use a single script that automatically attaches and mounts all volumes based on their device names. Which approach should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use the EC2 instance's user data to run a script that uses the AWS CLI to attach volumes by their volume IDs and then mounts them using their device names.. User data scripts provide a reliable way to automate tasks at instance launch, including attaching EBS volumes by volume ID and mounting them. This ensures that the correct volumes are attached and available before the SAP HANA database starts. Other options either do not guarantee attachment, add latency, or are not designed for stateful database instances.

Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling group with a launch template that specifies the EBS volumes, and use a lifecycle hook to mount the volumes after launch.

Answer

Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that triggers an AWS Lambda function to attach and mount the volumes when the instance state changes to running.

Answer

Use the EC2 instance's fstab file to mount the volumes by their device names, and rely on the volumes being automatically attached by AWS.

Question 4

A company runs SAP HANA on an Amazon EC2 instance with 1 TB of memory. They need to ensure that the database can recover quickly in case of a failure. They are evaluating backup strategies. Which backup method provides the fastest recovery time for SAP HANA?

Accepted Answer

Take regular Amazon EBS snapshots of the SAP HANA data and log volumes, and restore from the latest snapshot if needed.. Restoring from an Amazon EBS snapshot is typically the fastest recovery method for SAP HANA because it avoids the overhead of file-level restore. EBS snapshots are block-level and can be quickly turned into new volumes. While other methods like S3 backups are durable, they involve more steps and data transfer, increasing recovery time.

Answer

Use SAP HANA's built-in backup to Amazon S3, and restore directly from S3 to the database.

Answer

Enable SAP HANA fast restart and configure the EC2 instance to use an instance store for the persistent memory.

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to perform a full data backup to a network file system (NFS) mounted on Amazon EFS.

Question 5

A company is migrating its SAP HANA database to AWS and requires a storage solution that provides sub-millisecond latency, high IOPS, and durability across multiple Availability Zones. The database will be used for a mission-critical workload with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of zero and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 30 seconds. Which storage configuration should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes in a SAP HANA scale-out cluster with synchronous replication across Availability Zones using SAP HANA system replication.. SAP HANA requires high-performance block storage with sub-millisecond latency. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express meets this need, and SAP HANA system replication in synchronous mode across Availability Zones provides zero data loss and rapid failover. This combination is the standard certified approach for mission-critical SAP HANA on AWS, ensuring both performance and high availability.

Answer

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with Multi-AZ deployment and automatic failover.

Answer

Amazon EBS gp3 volumes with provisioned IOPS and throughput, replicated across Availability Zones using AWS DataSync.

Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes attached to a single EC2 instance with Multi-Attach enabled.

Question 6

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The SAP application servers will run on Amazon EC2 instances, and the database will be SAP HANA on an EC2 instance. The company wants to ensure that the SAP application servers can communicate with the HANA database securely and with low latency. The company also wants to minimize network costs. Which TWO actions should the company take? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable encryption in transit for SAP HANA connections using TLS.. To secure communication between SAP application servers and SAP HANA, security groups should restrict traffic to only the required ports, and TLS encryption should be enabled to protect data in transit. These measures ensure that communication is both secure and compliant, while maintaining low latency by keeping resources within the same VPC.

Answer

Use AWS Direct Connect to connect the application servers to the database.

Answer

Deploy the SAP application servers and the SAP HANA database in separate VPCs and use VPC peering.

Answer

Place the SAP application servers and the SAP HANA database in the same Amazon VPC and the same subnet.

Question 7

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The SAP HANA database is on an EC2 instance with Amazon EBS volumes. The company needs to implement a backup strategy that meets the following requirements: backups must be stored durably and cost-effectively, the backup process must not impact database performance, and backups must be retained for 7 years for compliance. Which solution should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA's built-in backup command to back up directly to Amazon S3, and configure an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition backups to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days.. SAP HANA natively supports backups directly to Amazon S3, which avoids performance impact on the database by using the backup infrastructure. S3 offers durable, cost-effective storage, and lifecycle policies can transition backups to Glacier Deep Archive for long-term retention. This solution meets all requirements: durability, cost-effectiveness, no performance impact, and 7-year retention.

Answer

Use SAP HANA's built-in backup command to back up to an Amazon EFS file system, and use AWS Backup to copy the backups to Amazon S3 Glacier.

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to perform full backups to a local EBS volume, then use AWS DataSync to copy the backups to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to create EBS snapshots of the SAP HANA data and log volumes every hour, and retain them for 7 years.

Question 8

A solutions architect is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application that runs on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The application requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 seconds and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 1 minute. Which RDS deployment option meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

A Multi-AZ deployment with synchronous replication.. Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments with synchronous replication provide automatic failover to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone, ensuring data is committed to both primary and standby before acknowledging a write. This achieves an RPO of effectively zero (less than 5 seconds) and an RTO typically under 1 minute, meeting the stated requirements.

Answer

A single-AZ deployment with cross-Region automated backups.

Answer

A single-AZ deployment with a standby instance manually promoted.

Answer

A Multi-AZ deployment with a Read Replica in a different Region.

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to an IAM role used by an EC2 instance. The EC2 instance has an Elastic IP address of 203.0.113.5 and is running in a VPC with CIDR 10.0.0.0/16. When the application on the instance tries to upload an object to the S3 bucket 'my-bucket', it receives an Access Denied error. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The condition checks the source IP address, but the EC2 instance uses a private IP address within the VPC when communicating with S3 via a VPC endpoint.. The IAM policy condition likely includes an `aws:SourceIp` condition that allows only the Elastic IP address (203.0.113.5). However, when the EC2 instance communicates with S3 via a VPC endpoint, traffic uses a private IP from the VPC CIDR (10.0.0.0/16) as the source IP, not the Elastic IP. This mismatch causes the condition to evaluate to False, resulting in Access Denied.

Answer

The policy does not allow the s3:PutObject action.

Answer

The resource ARN is incorrect; it should be arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket without the asterisk.

Answer

The policy is missing a Deny statement for other IP addresses.

Question 10

Refer to the exhibit. An Application Load Balancer is configured to route traffic to an Auto Scaling group of web servers. The health check for the target group is failing. The web servers are healthy and running, but the health check endpoint is returning a 503 status code because the application cannot connect to the database. The database is an Amazon RDS instance in the same VPC. Which action should the solutions architect take to resolve the health check failure?

Accepted Answer

Change the health check endpoint to a static page that does not require database connectivity.. The health check endpoint should validate the web server's ability to serve traffic, not the database's availability. By changing the health check to a static page (e.g., /health.html) that does not depend on database connectivity, the load balancer will correctly assess the web server's health independently. This decouples the health check from the database, preventing cascading failures where a database outage causes all web servers to be marked unhealthy and removed from the target group.

Answer

Restart the web server instances to reset the database connection.

Answer

Modify the application's health check endpoint to return a 200 OK status even when the database is unavailable.

Answer

Increase the health check interval to allow more time for the database to respond.

Question 11

A company is designing a multi-tier web application on AWS. The web tier must scale based on CPU utilization, and the application tier must scale based on request count. Both tiers are deployed in a VPC with public and private subnets. Which combination of AWS services should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Application Load Balancer for the web tier and Network Load Balancer for the application tier. The web tier requires an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute HTTP/HTTPS traffic and can scale based on CPU utilization using an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking policy. The application tier needs a Network Load Balancer (NLB) to handle high request counts at the transport layer (TCP/UDP), which is ideal for scaling based on request count per target. This combination allows each tier to use the most appropriate load balancer for its scaling metric and protocol requirements.

Answer

Classic Load Balancer for both tiers

Answer

Network Load Balancer for the web tier and Application Load Balancer for the application tier

Answer

Amazon API Gateway for the web tier and Application Load Balancer for the application tier

Question 12

A company is migrating a legacy monolithic application to a microservices architecture on AWS. The application currently uses an Oracle database with complex stored procedures. The company wants to minimize changes to the application code during migration. Which database migration strategy should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Replatform the application by migrating the Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The company wants to minimize changes to the application code during migration. By replatforming the Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle, the application can continue to use the same Oracle database engine, stored procedures, and SQL dialect with minimal or no code changes. This approach avoids the need to rewrite complex stored procedures or adapt to a different database engine, which would be required with other migration strategies.

Answer

Migrate the database to Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility using the AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

Store the data in Amazon S3 and use Athena for querying

Answer

Refactor the application to use Amazon DynamoDB as the database

Question 13

A company runs a stateful web application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group with a dynamic scaling policy based on CPU utilization. The application maintains session state in memory on each instance. Users report that they are frequently logged out and lose their session data during scaling events. What should the company do to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Modify the application to store session state in an Amazon ElastiCache cluster. Storing session state externally in ElastiCache decouples session data from individual EC2 instances. This ensures that when instances are terminated or added during scaling events, users retain their session state regardless of which instance serves their request. ElastiCache provides a low-latency, in-memory cache that is ideal for session persistence in stateful web applications.

Answer

Change the scaling policy to a simple scaling policy instead of dynamic scaling

Answer

Enable sticky sessions (session affinity) on the Application Load Balancer

Answer

Increase the cooldown period for the Auto Scaling group

Question 14

A company is deploying a serverless application using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB. The application must meet high availability and low latency requirements. The company expects traffic to spike unpredictably. Which THREE strategies should the company implement to ensure the application can handle the load? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Enable API Gateway caching with a suitable TTL. API Gateway caching stores responses from your endpoints, reducing the number of calls made to the backend Lambda function and DynamoDB. By setting a suitable TTL, you ensure that frequently accessed data is served from the cache, which lowers latency and offloads the backend during unpredictable traffic spikes. This directly supports high availability by preventing backend overload.

Answer

Set the Lambda function timeout to the maximum value of 15 minutes

Answer

Configure DynamoDB auto scaling with a minimum capacity of 10 read and 10 write capacity units

Question 15

A company runs a critical web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application uses Auto Scaling and a MySQL RDS Multi-AZ DB instance. Users report intermittent connection timeouts, and CloudWatch metrics show CPUUtilization spikes to 90% on the DB instance. The application queries are read-heavy with occasional writes. What is the MOST cost-effective design change to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Add an RDS read replica in the same region and configure the application to route read queries to the replica.. The most cost-effective design change because adding an RDS read replica offloads read-heavy queries from the primary DB instance, reducing CPU utilization without requiring a larger instance. Since the workload is read-heavy with occasional writes, a read replica handles SELECT traffic while the Multi-AZ primary manages writes, improving performance at a lower cost than scaling up.

Answer

Implement ElastiCache Redis cluster to cache query results and reduce DB load.

Answer

Enable RDS Performance Insights and create a CloudWatch alarm to reboot the DB instance on high CPU.

Answer

Switch the DB instance to a larger instance type to handle the load.