PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 27 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS. The SAP application servers are in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones. The SAP HANA database runs on a single EC2 instance in us-east-1a. The database instance has an Elastic IP and uses EBS io1 volumes with 5000 provisioned IOPS. During a recent deployment, the company experienced a complete outage when the Availability Zone us-east-1a became unavailable due to a power failure. The database was unavailable for 6 hours until the zone recovered. The company wants to implement a highly available architecture that can automatically recover from an AZ failure with minimal data loss. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 30 minutes. What should the company do?

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

Accepted Answer

Set up HANA System Replication with synchronous replication to a secondary instance in us-east-1b and configure automatic takeover.. HANA System Replication with synchronous replication to a secondary instance in a different Availability Zone (us-east-1b) provides automatic takeover, meeting the RPO of 15 minutes (synchronous replication ensures no data loss) and RTO of 30 minutes (automatic failover). Option B is wrong because EBS snapshots every 15 minutes cannot guarantee RPO and RTO; restore time from snapshots often exceeds 30 minutes, and cross-region copying adds latency. Option C is wrong because scaling within the same AZ does not address AZ failure; the single point of failure remains. Option D is wrong because Amazon RDS for SAP HANA does not exist; HANA is not supported on RDS. The correct architecture requires HANA System Replication across AZs.

Answer

Take EBS snapshots every 15 minutes and copy them to another region.

Answer

Move the HANA database to a larger instance in the same Availability Zone and increase IOPS to 10000.

Answer

Migrate the HANA database to Amazon RDS for SAP HANA with Multi-AZ enabled.

Question 2

A company uses SAP BusinessObjects (BO) on AWS. The BO servers run on EC2 instances in a private subnet. Users access the BI Launch Pad through an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in a public subnet. The company recently received a security audit finding that the ALB is accessible from the internet on port 443, but the security group allows inbound traffic from 0.0.0.0/0. The audit requires that only the company's corporate IP range (203.0.113.0/24) should be allowed. Additionally, the company wants to reduce the attack surface by blocking traffic from other IPs. What should the company do to meet the security requirement?

Accepted Answer

Modify the security group attached to the ALB to allow only inbound traffic from 203.0.113.0/24 on port 443.. The correct answer because modifying the security group attached to the ALB to restrict inbound traffic on port 443 to only the corporate IP range (203.0.113.0/24) is the most direct and effective way to meet the requirement. Security groups are stateful and can enforce IP-based restrictions. Option A is not the best choice because AWS WAF is not necessary for simple IP allowlisting; it's more suited for complex rules like rate limiting or SQL injection prevention. Option C is incorrect because while a network ACL can also restrict traffic, it is stateless and requires separate inbound and outbound rules, and it applies to the subnet rather than the ALB directly, which is less granular. Option D is unnecessary because moving the ALB to a private subnet would block all internet traffic, preventing even corporate users from accessing BI Launch Pad without additional VPN setup, which is more complex than needed.

Answer

Deploy AWS WAF on the ALB and create a rule to allow only the corporate IP range.

Answer

Replace the security group with a network ACL on the ALB subnet to allow only the corporate IP range.

Answer

Move the ALB to a private subnet and use a VPN for user access.

Question 3

A company is deploying a new SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The system will be used by 500 concurrent users. The SAP application server and the HANA database will run on separate EC2 instances. The company needs to ensure that the database instance has enough memory for the HANA database, which requires 512 GB of RAM. The application server requires 32 vCPUs and 128 GB of RAM. The company wants to minimize costs while meeting these requirements. Which combination of EC2 instance types should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Use an r5.24xlarge for the database and an r5.8xlarge for the application server.. The HANA database requires 512 GB of RAM. The r5.24xlarge provides 768 GB of RAM and 96 vCPUs, which is sufficient and cost-effective for the database. The r5.8xlarge provides 32 vCPUs and 256 GB of RAM, meeting the application server's requirements of 32 vCPUs and 128 GB. Option A uses an r5.12xlarge (384 GB RAM) for the database, which is insufficient for 512 GB. Option B uses an x1e.8xlarge (244 GB RAM) for the database, also insufficient. Option C uses an x1e.32xlarge (976 GB RAM) for the database, which is overkill and more expensive, and the m5.8xlarge (32 vCPUs, 128 GB RAM) for the application is adequate but the database choice increases cost unnecessarily. Therefore, D minimizes cost while meeting requirements.

Answer

Use an r5.12xlarge for the database and an m5.4xlarge for the application server.

Answer

Use an x1e.8xlarge for the database and an r5.8xlarge for the application server.

Answer

Use an x1e.32xlarge for the database and an m5.8xlarge for the application server.

Question 4

A company is running an SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The SAP application is deployed on EC2 instances in a Multi-AZ setup with a shared /sapmnt directory using Amazon EFS. The database is running on Amazon RDS for SAP ASE. Performance monitoring reveals that the /sapmnt volume is experiencing high read latency during peak hours. Which action would most effectively reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Migrate /sapmnt to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP.. Migrating /sapmnt to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides a high-performance, low-latency shared file system that is fully supported for SAP S/4HANA. FSx for NetApp ONTAP offers consistent low-latency access and is optimized for SAP workloads. Option B (using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis) is not a file system solution and cannot replace the shared /sapmnt directory. Option C (increasing the provisioned throughput on the EFS file system) may improve performance but is less effective than using FSx, as EFS is a general-purpose file system with higher latency compared to FSx for NetApp ONTAP. Option D (increasing EC2 instance size) addresses compute capacity, not storage latency, and thus would not reduce read latency on the file system.

Answer

Use Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to cache /sapmnt data.

Answer

Increase the provisioned throughput on the EFS file system.

Answer

Increase the size of the EC2 instances running SAP.

Question 5

An SAP ERP system on AWS is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues between the SAP application servers and the database server. Both are in the same VPC, but in different subnets. The security group for the database allows traffic from the application security group. Network ACLs are default (allow all). Despite this, some application servers cannot connect during peak loads. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The connection tracking table for the database security group is full, dropping new connections.. AWS security groups are stateful and track connections. Under peak loads, the connection tracking table can become full, causing new connections to be dropped. Option A is wrong because security groups do not have a rule evaluation limit; they evaluate all rules. Option C is wrong because a NAT Gateway is used for outbound internet traffic, not for internal VPC communication. Option D is wrong because VPC Endpoints are used for accessing AWS services privately, not for database connectivity.

Answer

The security group inbound rule for the database has reached its rule evaluation limit.

Answer

The application servers are using a single NAT Gateway for outbound traffic, causing a bottleneck.

Answer

The database is accessed through a VPC Endpoint, which is rate-limiting connections.

Question 6

A company is planning to migrate its SAP HANA database to AWS. The database size is 3 TB, and they need high I/O performance with low latency. The SAP workload is critical and requires high availability. Which AWS storage solution should they choose for the HANA data volume?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes.. AWS strongly recommends using Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes for SAP HANA data volumes due to their high performance, low latency, and high durability, which meet SAP's critical workload and high availability requirements. Option A (EBS gp3) is cost-effective but may not provide the consistent low latency required for SAP HANA. Option B (EC2 Instance Store) offers low latency but is ephemeral and does not provide data persistence, making it unsuitable for database data. Option C (EFS with Provisioned Throughput) is a file system, not block storage, and is not supported for SAP HANA data volumes.

Answer

Amazon EBS gp3 volumes.

Answer

EC2 Instance Store volumes.

Answer

Amazon EFS with Provisioned Throughput.

Question 7

An SAP system on AWS is using a shared /usr/sap/trans directory mounted on an NFS file server. The file server is an EC2 instance with a standard gp2 EBS volume. During SAP transports, users experience slow response times and occasional timeouts. The system administrator suspects the file server is the bottleneck. Which solution would provide a fully managed, highly available, and performant file share for SAP transport files?

Accepted Answer

Migrate /usr/sap/trans to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with Multi-AZ deployment.. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully managed, high-performance NFS file system that supports Multi-AZ deployment and is SAP-certified for /usr/sap/trans. Option A (multiple EC2 file servers with a load balancer) adds complexity and is not fully managed. Option B (Amazon EFS) can be used but may not provide the same level of performance and features as FSx ONTAP for this use case. Option D (increasing the EBS volume size) does not address the single point of failure and may not significantly improve throughput.

Answer

Configure multiple EC2 file servers with a load balancer.

Answer

Replace the EC2 file server with Amazon EFS.

Answer

Increase the EBS volume size of the file server to improve throughput.

Question 8

A company is migrating its SAP ECC system to SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The current database is running on Oracle. They want to minimize downtime during the migration. Which TWO services or features should they consider to achieve a near-zero downtime migration? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Snowball to transfer the initial Oracle data dump to AWS.. To achieve near-zero downtime migration from Oracle to SAP HANA on AWS, two key services are recommended: AWS Snowball for the initial bulk data transfer to AWS, and AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for ongoing replication of changes from Oracle to HANA. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is used for replication between two HANA systems, not for heterogeneous migration from Oracle. EC2 Hibernate and EBS Snapshots are not designed for live database migration across different engines.

Answer

Use SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) for the final synchronization.

Answer

Use EC2 Hibernate to pause the source instance during cutover.

Answer

Use Amazon EBS Snapshots for point-in-time recovery and replication.

Question 9

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance issues. The operations team wants to set up monitoring to identify bottlenecks. Which AWS service should they use to collect and analyze SAP performance metrics?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is correct because CloudWatch can collect custom metrics from SAP and EC2 instances, enabling performance monitoring. The other options are incorrect: AWS Config tracks resource compliance, AWS X-Ray traces microservices, AWS CloudTrail logs API calls for auditing, and AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations but not granular performance metrics.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 10

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS with a single Availability Zone (AZ). They want to improve high availability (HA) by deploying across multiple AZs. Which THREE components must be configured to support a multi-AZ SAP HANA HA setup? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Elastic Load Balancer (ALB or NLB) for the SAP application tier. To achieve multi-AZ high availability for SAP HANA on AWS, three core components are required. First, SAP HANA System Replication must be configured to replicate data synchronously or asynchronously across AZs, ensuring database failover capability. Second, a shared file system (e.g., Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP or Amazon EFS) is needed for directories like /sapmnt and /usr/sap/trans so that all application servers can access consistent files after failover. Third, an Elastic Load Balancer (ALB or NLB) distributes traffic to SAP application servers across AZs, enabling automatic failover at the application tier. Option A (Route 53 health checks) is a DNS-level component that can support failover but is not a direct requirement for the multi-AZ HA architecture itself; it is often used in conjunction but not considered a core component. Option C (CloudFront) is a CDN service and has no role in SAP HA.

Answer

Amazon Route 53 health checks for automatic failover

Answer

Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the application servers

Question 11

An SAP customer is planning to use AWS for their SAP HANA environment. They need to ensure that the chosen EC2 instance types are certified by SAP for HANA. Which THREE sources can they use to verify SAP HANA certification for AWS instance types? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

AWS documentation on SAP HANA certified instances. Options A, B, and E are correct. AWS documentation on SAP HANA certified instances provides a list of certified instance types. The SAP Cloud Appliance Library offers pre-configured HANA environments that are certified. The SAP HANA Hardware Directory is the official SAP source for certified hardware, including AWS instances. Option C (AWS Support Center) can provide guidance but is not a direct source for certification lists. Option D (AWS Pricing Calculator) does not include certification information.

Answer

AWS Support Center

Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator

Question 12

You are an SAP Basis consultant for a company running SAP ECC on Oracle on AWS. The system is hosted on a single EC2 instance (r5.8xlarge) with a separate EC2 instance for the database (Oracle on RDS). Recently, users have reported that the system becomes unresponsive for a few minutes every day at 10:00 AM. You check CloudWatch metrics and see a spike in CPU utilization on the application server at that time, but the database metrics are normal. The application server is running SAP instance and also a custom batch job that runs daily at 10:00 AM. The batch job is using a significant amount of CPU. You need to resolve the issue without losing the functionality of the batch job. Which action should you take?

Accepted Answer

Move the custom batch job to a separate EC2 instance dedicated to running batch processes.. The correct answer. Moving the custom batch job to a separate EC2 instance isolates the CPU-intensive process from the main SAP application server, preventing it from impacting user sessions. This resolves the issue without losing batch job functionality. Option A (rescheduling) might avoid peak hours but does not address resource contention if the batch job overlaps with other activities. Option C (upgrading instance) is costly and may not be necessary. Option D (RDS read replica) only offloads database queries and does not address application server CPU spikes.

Answer

Reschedule the batch job to run at a different time, such as 2:00 AM.

Answer

Upgrade the application server instance to a larger size, such as r5.16xlarge.

Answer

Create an RDS read replica and offload the batch job's database queries to it.

Question 13

You are managing an SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The system uses a multi-AZ deployment with two application servers (one in us-east-1a, one in us-east-1b) and a HANA database in us-east-1a with a standby in us-east-1b using HSR. The /sapmnt and /usr/sap/trans are on an EFS file system. Recently, you noticed that during a failover test of the HANA database, the application servers lost connectivity to the database for several minutes, causing errors. You also observed that after the failover, the application servers could not reconnect until the EFS mount was remounted. What is the most likely cause and solution?

Accepted Answer

Configure EFS mount targets in each AZ and use an EFS access point with a consistent mount path.. The issue is that during a HANA database failover, the application servers lost connectivity and could not reconnect until the EFS mount was remounted. This indicates that the EFS mount targets are not properly configured for multi-AZ access. When the database fails over to the standby in us-east-1b, the application servers may be trying to access the EFS file system through a mount target that is only in us-east-1a, or the DNS resolution leads to a mount target in the wrong AZ, causing connectivity loss. Option C is correct because configuring EFS mount targets in each AZ and using an EFS access point with a consistent mount path ensures that application servers in any AZ can reliably mount and access the shared file system without relying on cross-AZ connectivity. Option A (increase EFS throughput) does not address connectivity issues during failover. Option B (migrate to FSx for ONTAP) is not the immediate solution and may be unnecessary. Option D (synchronous replication) does not fix the EFS connectivity problem.

Answer

Increase the provisioned throughput on the EFS file system to handle the increased load during failover.

Answer

Migrate the shared file systems to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with multi-AZ deployment.

Answer

Reconfigure SAP HANA System Replication to use synchronous replication.

Question 14

Your company is running SAP Business Suite on Oracle on AWS. The database is hosted on an EC2 instance with EBS volumes configured as RAID 0 for performance. You are planning to migrate to SAP HANA on AWS. The new HANA database will be hosted on a single EC2 instance with EBS io2 volumes. You need to ensure minimal downtime during the migration. Which approach should you take?

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with DMO to replicate data while the source is running, then perform a final cutover.. The correct approach is to use SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with a Database Migration Option (DMO) migration. This allows continuous data replication from the source Oracle database to the target SAP HANA database while the source system remains operational, minimizing downtime. The final cutover is performed quickly. Option B (AWS DMS) is not suitable because AWS DMS does not support SAP HANA as a target. Option C (SAP LaMa) is a landscape management tool that can automate some migration steps but does not in itself provide near-zero downtime replication; it would typically be used with other methods. Option D (classic DMO with SUM in a single step) requires stopping the source system, resulting in extended downtime.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate from Oracle to HANA.

Answer

Use SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) to automate the migration with minimal downtime.

Answer

Perform a classic migration using SAP Software Update Manager (SUM) with database migration option (DMO) in a single step, stopping the source system.

Question 15

An SAP customer has deployed SAP HANA on AWS using an r5.12xlarge instance with 16 EBS io1 volumes for data and log. The system is running in production. The operations team receives an alert that one of the EBS volumes has failed (status check failed). The volume is part of the RAID 0 stripe for the data volume. What should they do to recover the system with minimal data loss?

Accepted Answer

Restore the HANA database from the latest backup to a new set of EBS volumes.. Since the failed volume is part of a RAID 0 stripe, the entire stripe is compromised. Restoring from the most recent backup is the safest way to recover with minimal data loss. Option A (replace volume and rebuild RAID) may not work because RAID 0 has no redundancy. Option B (AWS Support) may help but not recover data directly. Option C (increase volume size) does not fix the failed volume.

Answer

Detach the failed volume, attach a new identical volume, and rebuild the RAID array.

Answer

Contact AWS Support to recover the data from the failed EBS volume.

Answer

Increase the size of the remaining volumes to compensate for the lost capacity.