PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 27 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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.. Option A is correct because updating the ALB security group to restrict inbound traffic to the corporate IP range is the simplest and most effective solution. Option B is wrong because a WAF is not necessary for IP restriction; security groups can do it. Option C is wrong because a NACL can also restrict, but security groups are stateful and easier. Option D is wrong because moving the ALB to a private subnet would block all internet traffic.

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 2

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.. Option B is correct because an x1e.4xlarge has 122 GB memory, too low; x1e.8xlarge has 244 GB; x1e.16xlarge has 488 GB; x1e.32xlarge has 976 GB. For 512 GB, the x1e.32xlarge is overkill; but x1e.16xlarge has 488 GB, which is insufficient. Actually, the correct instance for 512 GB is x1e.16xlarge (488 GB) is not enough; x1e.32xlarge (976 GB) is too large. Better: use an r5.24xlarge with 768 GB. Among options, D: r5.24xlarge (768 GB) for DB and r5.8xlarge (32 vCPU, 256 GB) for app. That fits. Option A: x1e.32xlarge is expensive. Option B: x1e.8xlarge (244 GB) insufficient. Option C: r5.12xlarge (384 GB) insufficient. So D is correct.

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 3

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.. Option B is correct because switching to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides a high-performance shared file system with low-latency access and is fully supported for SAP /sapmnt. Option A (increase EFS throughput) may help but is less effective than using FSx. Option C (ElastiCache) does not replace the file system. Option D (increase instance size) addresses compute, not storage latency.

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 4

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.. Option D is correct because security groups have a limit on the number of connections they can track, and during peak loads, the connection tracking table can become full, causing new connections to be dropped. Option A is wrong because if there are multiple subnets, a single NAT gateway is not relevant for internal traffic. Option B is wrong because VPC endpoints are for AWS services, not for database connectivity. Option C is wrong because security group rules are stateful and do not have a rule evaluation limit in this context.

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 5

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.. Option C is correct because AWS strongly recommends using io2 Block Express volumes for SAP HANA due to their high performance, durability, and ability to meet SAP's high availability requirements. Option A (EFS) is a file system, not block storage. Option B (gp3) is cost-effective but may not provide the consistent low latency needed for HANA. Option D (Instance Store) provides low latency but is ephemeral and not suitable for persistent data.

Answer

Amazon EBS gp3 volumes.

Answer

EC2 Instance Store volumes.

Answer

Amazon EFS with Provisioned Throughput.

Question 6

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.. Option A is correct because Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully managed, high-performance NFS file system that supports multi-AZ and is SAP-certified for /usr/sap/trans. Option B (EFS) can be used but may not provide the same level of performance and features as FSx ONTAP for this use case. Option C (increase EBS size) does not address the single point of failure. Option D (multiple file servers) adds complexity and is not fully managed.

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 7

An SAP customer is running SAP HANA on AWS using m5.8xlarge instances. They want to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy using a secondary region with a standby HANA instance. Which TWO options should they consider to replicate the HANA data to the DR region? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon EBS Snapshots and copy them to the DR region for periodic restore.. Options B and C are correct. SAP HANA System Replication is the standard method for replicating data between HANA instances across regions. Amazon EBS Snapshots can be copied to another region and used to restore volumes. Option A (EFS) is not suitable for HANA data volumes. Option D (S3 Transfer Acceleration) is not a replication method for HANA. Option E (DMS) is for database migrations, not ongoing replication.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate HANA to the DR region.

Answer

Use Amazon EFS to replicate the HANA data directory to the DR region.

Answer

Use AWS S3 Transfer Acceleration to continuously upload HANA log files to the DR region.

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 THREE services or features should they consider to achieve a near-zero downtime migration? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) for the final synchronization.. Options A, C, and D are correct. AWS DMS can replicate data from Oracle to SAP HANA with minimal downtime. SAP HANA System Replication can be used for the final sync. EBS Snapshots provide a backup and restore option but are not for zero downtime. Option B (Snowball) is for large data transfer, not for ongoing replication. Option E (EC2 Hibernate) is not applicable for database migration.

Answer

Use AWS Snowball to transfer the initial Oracle data dump to AWS.

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 TWO AWS services should they use to collect and analyze SAP performance metrics? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Options A and D are correct. Amazon CloudWatch can collect custom metrics from SAP and EC2. AWS CloudTrail logs API calls for auditing. Option B (X-Ray) is for tracing microservices, not SAP. Option C (Config) is for resource compliance. Option E (Trusted Advisor) provides recommendations but not granular monitoring.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

AWS X-Ray

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. Options A, C, and D are correct. SAP HANA System Replication is required for database HA across AZs. A load balancer (like ELB) is needed to distribute traffic to application servers. EBS Multi-Attach volumes are not supported; instead, shared storage like FSx or EFS is used. Option B (CloudFront) is not relevant. Option E (Route 53) is for DNS but not a core HA component.

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 D are correct. The SAP HANA Hardware Directory lists certified instances. The SAP Cloud Appliance Library provides pre-configured HANA images. AWS documentation also lists certified instances. Option C (AWS Pricing Calculator) does not provide certification info. Option E (AWS Support) can assist but is not a direct source for certification lists.

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.. Option A is correct because moving the batch job to a separate EC2 instance isolates the CPU-intensive process from the main SAP application, preventing it from affecting user sessions. Option B (increase instance size) is expensive and may not be necessary if the batch job can be separated. Option C (reschedule the job) might avoid peak hours but does not address the root cause of resource contention. Option D (RDS read replica) does not help with application server CPU issues.

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.. Option D is correct because the EFS mount target is in a specific subnet, and after failover, the application servers might be trying to connect to the wrong mount target or the DNS might not resolve correctly. Using an EFS access point with a consistent path and ensuring proper DNS resolution across AZs can resolve this. Option A (increase EFS throughput) does not address connectivity. Option B (use FSx for ONTAP) could be an alternative but is not the immediate cause. Option C (HSR setup issue) is not the cause if the database fails over correctly.

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.. Option C is correct because using SAP HANA System Replication with a DMO migration allows near-zero downtime by replicating data while the source system is running. Option A (cold migration) causes extended downtime. Option B (AWS DMS) is not suitable for migrating from Oracle to HANA as it does not support HANA as a target. Option D (SAP LaMa) can assist but does not directly provide near-zero downtime migration.

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.. Option D is correct because 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.