PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 26 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP system on AWS needs to be highly available across two Availability Zones. The application tier runs on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The database tier uses an RDS Multi-AZ deployment. What additional step is REQUIRED to ensure complete high availability for the application tier?

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

Accepted Answer

Launch EC2 instances in at least two different Availability Zones.. For the application tier to be highly available across two Availability Zones, EC2 instances must be distributed across at least two AZs so that if one AZ fails, the Application Load Balancer can route traffic to instances in the other AZ. Option B directly addresses this requirement. Without instances in multiple AZs, the application tier remains a single point of failure, even if the ALB and RDS Multi-AZ are configured correctly.

Answer

Use a larger EC2 instance type.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach for the root volumes.

Answer

Configure an Auto Scaling group with a dynamic scaling policy.

Question 2

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to set up a disaster recovery (DR) site in another AWS Region. The RPO is 15 minutes and RTO is 4 hours. The database is SAP HANA. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Enable SAP HANA System Replication across regions.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native SAP mechanism for replicating HANA databases to a secondary site with low RPO (typically seconds to minutes) and supports cross-region asynchronous replication. With an RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 4 hours, HSR can meet these requirements by continuously shipping log entries to the DR region, enabling a controlled takeover within the RTO window.

Answer

Take nightly backups to S3 and restore in the DR region.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for continuous replication.

Answer

Use AWS Backup for cross-region EBS snapshots.

Question 3

Which TWO options are valid methods for encrypting data at rest in an SAP HANA database running on Amazon EBS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable SAP HANA native encryption for the database.. Option B is correct because SAP HANA provides native data-at-rest encryption (via the hdbnsutil -enableEncryption command or the SQL statement ALTER SYSTEM PERSISTENCE ENCRYPTION ON), which encrypts the database's persistence layer (data and log volumes) directly within HANA. Option E is correct because enabling EBS encryption at instance launch (or via an encrypted EBS volume) uses AWS KMS-managed keys to encrypt the underlying EBS storage blocks where the HANA data and log files reside, providing transparent encryption at rest. Option A is incorrect because SSL/TLS only secures data in transit between clients and the database, not data at rest. Option C is incorrect because AWS KMS encrypts keys and supported AWS storage services, not individual database schemas; schema-level encryption is not a KMS function. Option D is incorrect because HANA database files are not stored in Amazon S3 with SSE-S3 for its persistence layer; SSE-S3 applies to S3 objects, not EBS-backed HANA data volumes.

Answer

Use SSL/TLS connections to the database.

Answer

Use AWS KMS to encrypt the database schema.

Answer

Store database files in Amazon S3 with SSE-S3.

Question 4

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 Amazon EventBridge) is correct because it can detect state changes in AWS resources and SAP systems, match them against rules, and route them to targets such as Amazon SNS or Lambda to send notifications when a system goes down. Amazon CloudWatch Alarms is also correct because it evaluates metrics or custom SAP health metrics against thresholds and, when the alarm state changes to ALARM, triggers actions like SNS notifications to alert on system unavailability. AWS Trusted Advisor is not correct because it provides best-practice checks and recommendations, not real-time SAP availability monitoring or down-state notifications. Amazon S3 event notifications are not correct because they only emit events for object-level operations in S3 buckets, not SAP system availability. AWS Config is not correct because it tracks resource configuration changes and compliance over time, not live SAP availability or down alerts.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

Amazon S3 event notifications

Answer

AWS Config

Question 5

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 6

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 7

An SAP HANA database is running on an EC2 instance with a gp3 EBS volume. The database workload requires high IOPS and throughput. The current configuration shows 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s throughput. Which change could improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Increase the EC2 instance size.. Increasing the EC2 instance size can provide additional EBS bandwidth, which may remove a bottleneck if the current instance's bandwidth is insufficient to fully utilize the gp3 volume's maximum IOPS (16,000) and throughput (1,000 MB/s). Options B, C, and D are incorrect: increasing volume size does not directly improve gp3 performance since IOPS and throughput are independent of size; changing to gp2 would likely reduce performance due to burst limitations; and gp3 volumes have a maximum of 16,000 IOPS, so increasing to 20,000 is not possible.

Answer

Increase the volume size to 1,000 GB.

Answer

Change the volume type to gp2.

Answer

Increase the volume's IOPS to 20,000.

Question 8

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 9

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.. Option A is correct because SAP HANA scale-out relies on low-latency, high-throughput inter-node communication for the internode network, and an AWS cluster placement group packs instances close together in a single Availability Zone to reduce network latency and improve bandwidth. Option C is correct because the practical number of nodes in a scale-out deployment is constrained by each instance type's network bandwidth and EBS throughput/IOPS limits, since all nodes must communicate and persist data efficiently. Option E is correct because each HANA node requires its own dedicated EBS volume(s) for data and log persistence, as HANA's shared-nothing architecture distributes data across nodes and does not support concurrently shared block storage. Option B is not appropriate because EBS Multi-Attach is designed for clustered applications with a cluster-aware file system, not for HANA's shared-nothing data layout. Option D is incorrect because a single large EC2 instance describes a scale-up deployment, not the multi-node scale-out design being asked about.

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach to share volumes between nodes.

Answer

Use a single large EC2 instance with many vCPUs.

Question 10

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.. For SAP ASE on AWS with an RTO of 4 hours and RPO of 1 hour, and a requirement to minimize changes and avoid complex replication, AWS Backup with scheduled EBS snapshots copied to the DR region is the most suitable approach. Snapshots can be taken hourly (meeting RPO), copied cross-region, and restored within the 4-hour RTO window. It requires no changes to the SAP ASE environment and no native replication setup.

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 11

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.. SAP HANA natively supports direct backup to Amazon S3 via the SAP HANA Backup and Restore integration, which uses the S3 API to stream backup files directly to an S3 bucket. This eliminates the need for intermediate storage or additional services, and enabling default S3 encryption (SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS) ensures data is encrypted at rest with minimal configuration overhead, meeting the requirement for efficiency and low operational burden.

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 12

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.. Enabling sticky sessions (session affinity) on the ALB target group ensures that all requests from a user session are routed to the same Web Dispatcher instance. Without session affinity, the ALB distributes requests across multiple Web Dispatcher instances, and if the session state is stored locally on each instance, subsequent requests may land on a different instance that does not have the session data, causing the session to be dropped. This is a common issue during peak hours when the load balancer distributes traffic more aggressively.

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 13

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 B is correct because SAP HANA's Backint API integrates with external backup tools, and on AWS you can configure Backint to write full, differential, and log backups directly to Amazon S3, which is a supported and durable target for HANA backups on EC2. Option C is correct because AWS Backup can orchestrate EBS snapshots of the EBS volumes holding HANA data and log files, providing crash-consistent volume-level backups that can be scheduled and retained per backup plan. Option A is wrong because Amazon RDS is a managed database service and does not host or back up SAP HANA, which runs on EC2 as a self-managed database. Option D is wrong because S3 Lifecycle policies only transition or expire objects already stored in S3; they are not themselves a backup strategy for HANA and cannot create the backups. Option E is wrong because EC2 instance store is ephemeral, non-persistent storage that loses data on instance stop, termination, or hardware failure, so it cannot serve as a reliable backup target.

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 14

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.. Option A is correct because SAP HANA is an in-memory database, so the EC2 instance type must provide enough RAM to hold the working data set plus overhead, and AWS/SAP sizing rules tie instance selection directly to memory capacity. Option B is correct because production HANA systems require sufficient network bandwidth for HANA system replication, backup/restore traffic, and data transfer, so the instance's networking performance is a key selection factor. Option D is correct because SAP only supports HANA on specific SAP-certified AWS instance types, and using a non-certified instance would put the production system outside SAP support. Option C is not required because standard SAP HANA does not depend on GPU acceleration for analytics; GPU-backed instances are not the normal certification criterion for HANA database production workloads. Option E is not correct because vCPU count alone is insufficient and can be misleading: HANA sizing is primarily memory-driven, and a high-vCPU instance with inadequate memory would not be suitable.

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 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. AWS CloudTrail captures API calls made to AWS services, including those made by the SAP application, and can deliver logs to Amazon S3 for long-term retention. It provides detailed records of who made the call, when, and from where. VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic, not API calls. AWS Config records resource configurations, and CloudWatch Logs is for application and system logs.

Answer

VPC Flow Logs

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs