PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 27 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating an SAP HANA database to AWS. Which TWO configurations are required to ensure high availability for the SAP HANA database in a multi-AZ setup?

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP HANA System Replication across two Availability Zones.. Option A is correct because SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native mechanism for replicating data from a primary to a secondary HANA node, and placing the two nodes in separate Availability Zones provides the multi-AZ fault tolerance required for high availability. Option D is correct because HSR alone does not perform automatic failover; a cluster manager such as Pacemaker (often with the SAPHanaSR resource agent) is needed to detect failures, promote the secondary node, and remap virtual IPs/endpoints. Option B is incorrect because a single EBS volume cannot be synchronously replicated to two nodes; EBS volumes are tied to one AZ and HSR handles replication at the database layer, not the block layer. Option C is incorrect because EBS Multi-Attach only supports io1/io2 volumes in a single AZ and is not a supported or safe way to share HANA data volumes across nodes. Option E is incorrect because an Application Load Balancer operates at Layer 7 for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and cannot front HANA database endpoints, which use native SQL ports and require cluster-managed virtual IPs or overlay networks.

Answer

Use a single EBS volume with synchronous replication to both nodes.

Answer

Configure EBS Multi-Attach to allow both HANA instances to share the same data volume.

Answer

Place an Application Load Balancer in front of the HANA database endpoints.

Question 2

A company is running SAP on AWS and needs to migrate a large on-premises SAP HANA database to AWS with minimal downtime. Which approach is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Set up SAP HANA System Replication between the on-premises system and an EC2 instance running HANA in AWS.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native, low-latency replication mechanism designed for HANA databases, enabling near-continuous data synchronization between an on-premises system and an EC2 instance. This approach supports a controlled takeover with minimal downtime, as it replicates transactions in real time using log shipping or synchronous replication, making it the most suitable for large databases requiring minimal interruption.

Answer

Export the HANA database to a file, upload to S3, and import into a new HANA instance on EC2.

Answer

Use AWS Server Migration Service (SMS) to replicate the entire on-premises server to AWS.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate data to an Amazon RDS for SAP HANA instance.

Question 3

A company is planning to run SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the SAP system is backed up according to best practices. Which backup strategy is recommended?

Accepted Answer

Use EBS snapshots after quiescing the SAP system, combined with database backups to S3.. For SAP S/4HANA on AWS, the recommended backup strategy combines EBS snapshots taken after quiescing the SAP system (to ensure file system consistency) with database backups to Amazon S3. Quiescing the application ensures that all pending I/O operations are flushed and the file system is in a consistent state, preventing data corruption. Database backups to S3 provide a separate, application-consistent recovery point that can be used for point-in-time recovery, which is critical for SAP systems.

Answer

Use EBS snapshots of the data volumes without quiescing the application.

Answer

Store backup files on instance store volumes for quick recovery.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take snapshots of the EC2 instance only.

Question 4

A company is running SAP BusinessObjects on AWS. The application is deployed on EC2 instances with an Application Load Balancer. Users are reporting that the application is sometimes unreachable. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The target group health checks are failing intermittently on the EC2 instances.. Intermittent unreachability of an application behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) is most commonly caused by health checks failing on the target EC2 instances. When health checks fail intermittently, the ALB will periodically mark the instances as unhealthy and stop routing traffic to them, causing the application to become unreachable during those windows. This matches the symptom of 'sometimes unreachable' rather than a persistent failure.

Answer

The security group for the instances is not allowing traffic from the load balancer.

Answer

The load balancer is not configured with sticky sessions.

Answer

The Route 53 TTL is too short for DNS resolution.

Question 5

Which TWO of the following are best practices for securing an SAP HANA database on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy the HANA instance in a private subnet without direct internet access.. Deploying the HANA instance in a private subnet without direct internet access ensures that the database is not exposed to the public internet, reducing the attack surface. This follows the AWS security best practice of using private subnets for sensitive workloads, with access only through bastion hosts or VPN/Direct Connect. It also aligns with SAP's own security recommendations for HANA deployments.

Answer

Disable SSL/TLS for client connections to improve performance.

Answer

Use a single Availability Zone to simplify network security group management.

Answer

Assign a public IP address to the HANA instance for easy access from the internet.

Question 6

Which THREE of the following are requirements for running SAP HANA in an AWS multi-zone HA cluster? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

At least two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones per node type.. SAP HANA in a multi-zone HA cluster requires at least two EC2 instances per node type (e.g., worker, standby) deployed in different Availability Zones to ensure high availability. This architecture allows automatic failover between zones, maintaining SAP HANA system replication and cluster quorum in the event of an AZ failure.

Answer

Use of an Elastic Load Balancer to distribute traffic to the HANA nodes.

Answer

All nodes must use instance store volumes for the HANA data.

Question 7

Which TWO of the following are valid methods for monitoring SAP system performance on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP Solution Manager to send monitoring data to Amazon CloudWatch via the SAP Cloud Platform.. SAP Solution Manager can be configured to forward monitoring data to Amazon CloudWatch via the SAP Cloud Platform (now SAP BTP) using the Cloud Management Gateway or direct integration. This allows SAP-specific metrics like system load, work process usage, and response times to be visualized and alerted on in CloudWatch, enabling unified monitoring alongside AWS infrastructure metrics.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail to capture system performance logs.

Answer

Use AWS Trusted Advisor to monitor real-time CPU utilization.

Answer

Use VPC Flow Logs to monitor database query performance.

Question 8

A company runs a critical SAP application on an SAP HANA database in a single Availability Zone on AWS. The database is 2 TB in size. The company needs to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The DR region must be in a different AWS Region. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate data from the HANA database to a HANA database in the DR region.. AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication (change data capture) can achieve an RPO of 15 minutes for a 2 TB SAP HANA database across AWS Regions. The RTO of 2 hours is achievable by provisioning the target HANA instance in advance and applying changes. This solution uses a fully managed AWS service, reducing operational overhead compared to manual scripting or third-party tools. While SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is native, cross-region synchronous replication is not feasible due to latency; asynchronous HSR could meet the RPO but is not listed as an option. DMS provides continuous replication with minimal setup and monitoring, making it the best choice among the given options.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) in a multitier setup with a primary in the source region and a synchronous secondary in the DR region. Use HANA takeover for failover.

Answer

Deploy a second HANA node in a different Availability Zone in the same region and configure HANA System Replication. Use AWS Global Accelerator to route traffic to the standby.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to schedule daily snapshots of the HANA database and copy them to the DR region. In the event of a disaster, restore the latest snapshot to a new HANA instance.

Question 9

An SAP Basis administrator is migrating an SAP ERP system from an on-premises environment to AWS. The system uses an SAP HANA database. The migration must have minimal downtime. The administrator plans to use SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) to synchronize data to an AWS HANA instance. However, the network latency between on-premises and AWS is consistently around 50 ms. What should the administrator do to ensure that HSR can maintain synchronization without impacting source system performance?

Accepted Answer

Configure HSR in asynchronous mode with full sync disabled to avoid affecting source transaction performance.. With 50 ms network latency, synchronous replication would block source transactions while waiting for acknowledgment from the target, severely impacting performance. Asynchronous mode with full sync disabled allows HSR to send log buffers without waiting for the target to confirm, ensuring source system performance is unaffected while still maintaining eventual consistency for migration.

Answer

Use synchronous replication with a lower sync timeout setting to avoid blocking.

Answer

Keep synchronous replication but increase the replication timeout value in the HANA global.ini file.

Answer

Enable HANA delta merge operations during replication to reduce the amount of data transferred.

Question 10

A company is deploying SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to use Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP as the shared file system for the SAP transport directory (/usr/sap/trans). The company needs to ensure that the transport directory is highly available and can be accessed from multiple SAP application servers across different Availability Zones. Which configuration should the SAP administrator use?

Accepted Answer

Create an FSx for ONTAP file system with Multi-AZ configuration and mount the NFS share on all SAP servers.. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with Multi-AZ configuration provides a highly available NFS share that can be accessed from SAP application servers across multiple Availability Zones, meeting the requirements for the SAP transport directory. Option A is incorrect because Amazon EFS, while highly available, is not the specified service required by the scenario (FSx for ONTAP is explicitly mentioned). Option B is incorrect because mounting from a single EC2 instance is not highly available and introduces a single point of failure. Option C is incorrect because Amazon S3 is not a POSIX-compliant file system and is not suitable for SAP transport directories.

Answer

Use Amazon EFS with a mount target in each AZ.

Answer

Mount the transport directory from an Amazon EC2 instance running NFS in the same AZ.

Answer

Store the transport directory in Amazon S3 and use an S3 mount point.

Question 11

A company is running SAP HANA on an EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes for data and log. The instance is experiencing high write latency on the log volume. The administrator notices that the log volume is a gp2 EBS volume with 1,000 GB size and 3,000 IOPS baseline. The average write IOPS to the log volume is 4,000, with peaks up to 5,500. Which action should the administrator take to resolve the latency?

Accepted Answer

Replace the gp2 volume with an io2 Block Express volume provisioned at 6,000 IOPS.. The gp2 volume's baseline IOPS is 3,000, but the log volume requires an average of 4,000 write IOPS with peaks up to 5,500, which exceeds the burst balance, causing latency. Replacing with an io2 Block Express volume provisioned at 6,000 IOPS provides consistent high IOPS and low latency, ideal for SAP HANA log volumes. Option B is incorrect because st1 volumes are throughput-optimized, not IOPS-optimized, and would not address the IOPS bottleneck. Option C is incorrect because striping additional gp2 volumes adds complexity and still relies on burst performance, which may not sustain the required IOPS. Option D is incorrect because while increasing gp2 size to 2,000 GB doubles baseline IOPS to 6,000, gp2 still uses a burst model; if the burst balance is depleted, latency can occur. io2 Block Express provides provisioned, consistent performance without bursting.

Answer

Change the volume type to st1 (throughput optimized) to improve throughput.

Answer

Add a second log volume and stripe them using LVM.

Answer

Increase the gp2 volume size to 2,000 GB to double the baseline IOPS.

Question 12

An SAP system administrator is configuring an SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes. The administrator wants to ensure that the data volumes are mirrored to protect against volume failure. Which RAID configuration should the administrator use for the HANA data volumes?

Accepted Answer

RAID 10. SAP HANA data volumes require high IOPS and redundancy against volume failure; RAID 10 combines mirroring (RAID 1) and striping (RAID 0), providing both fault tolerance and performance. SAP officially recommends RAID 10 for HANA data volumes on EBS, and it supports the low-latency, high-throughput I/O profile HANA demands. RAID 10 can tolerate multiple disk failures as long as they are not in the same mirrored pair.

Answer

RAID 5

Answer

RAID 0

Answer

RAID 6

Question 13

A company runs a critical SAP application on AWS. The SAP team needs to reduce network latency between application servers and the database. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Placement Groups (cluster). Placement Groups with a cluster placement strategy are designed to provide the lowest possible network latency and highest throughput by ensuring that EC2 instances are placed in a single Availability Zone with low-latency, high-bandwidth networking. For a critical SAP application where the application servers and database must communicate with minimal latency, a cluster placement group is the correct choice because it leverages non-blocking, fully bisectional bandwidth between instances, reducing network hops and jitter.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Answer

VPC Peering

Question 14

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues between the application server and the HANA database. The application team confirms the database is healthy. Which AWS service should be used to analyze network traffic between the two instances?

Accepted Answer

VPC Flow Logs. VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic information for network interfaces, allowing analysis of network traffic between the application server and HANA database to identify dropped packets or blocked traffic. AWS Config records resource configurations (not network traffic), CloudTrail logs API calls (not network flows), and CloudWatch Logs aggregates application and system logs (not network-level traffic).

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Question 15

An SAP administrator needs to back up SAP HANA database to Amazon S3. Which AWS service or feature should be used to automate this backup?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA Backup and Recovery with Backint. The SAP HANA Backup and Recovery feature can back up directly to S3 via the Backint agent. Option A is incorrect because EBS snapshots capture the entire volume, not just the HANA database, and are not SAP HANA-aware. Option C is incorrect because AWS Backup supports some databases but not SAP HANA directly. Option D is incorrect because S3 Lifecycle policies manage object retention, not backup initiation.

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots

Answer

AWS Backup

Answer

S3 Lifecycle policies