PAS-C01 Technology Practice Test 32 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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?

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

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 2

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 provides a fully managed, Multi-AZ, highly available NFS/SMB file system with sub-millisecond latencies and NetApp features (snapshots, dedup, FlexClone) that SAP transport directories benefit from. It removes the single-EC2-instance bottleneck and delivers consistent throughput for /usr/sap/trans, which is exactly what SAP on AWS reference architectures recommend for shared transport.

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 3

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 (AWS DMS) is for database migrations, not ongoing replication. Option D (Amazon EFS) is not suitable for HANA data volumes. Option E (S3 Transfer Acceleration) is not a replication method for HANA.

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 4

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 5

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.. When an EBS volume in a RAID 0 stripe fails, the entire stripe is compromised because RAID 0 has no redundancy — data across all volumes is lost. The only reliable recovery with minimal data loss is to restore the HANA database from the latest backup (or use HANA storage snapshots if configured) onto a new set of EBS volumes. AWS cannot recover data from a failed EBS volume, and rebuilding the RAID array on the same volumes is impossible because the data is already gone.

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.

Question 6

You are an AWS administrator for a company running SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The system uses a three-tier architecture: web dispatchers, application servers, and a HANA database. All components are in a single VPC. Security requirements demand that the web dispatchers are in a public subnet, application servers in private subnets, and the database in a private subnet. The web dispatchers need to communicate with the application servers on port 443, and application servers communicate with the database on port 31341. You have configured security groups accordingly. However, the web dispatchers cannot connect to the application servers. The network ACL for the public subnet allows inbound HTTPS from the internet and outbound all traffic. The private subnet NACL allows inbound HTTPS from the public subnet and outbound all traffic. The security group for the web dispatchers allows outbound HTTPS to the application security group. The application security group allows inbound HTTPS from the web security group. What is the issue?

Accepted Answer

The network ACL for the public subnet does not allow inbound ephemeral ports from the private subnet.. The issue is that network ACLs are stateless. The web dispatchers initiate outbound HTTPS connections to the application servers. The application servers respond using ephemeral ports. The public subnet NACL allows inbound HTTPS from the internet, but it does not allow inbound traffic on ephemeral ports from the private subnet. This blocks the return traffic. Therefore, option A is correct. Options B and C are incorrect because security groups are stateful and allow return traffic automatically. Option D is incorrect because the VPC's local route handles traffic between subnets.

Answer

The security group for the application servers does not allow inbound HTTPS from the web dispatchers.

Answer

The security group for the web dispatchers does not allow outbound HTTPS to the application security group.

Answer

The VPC does not have a route between the public and private subnets.

Question 7

An SAP environment on AWS consists of several EC2 instances running SAP NetWeaver and a separate HANA database instance. The system is using an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to the web dispatchers. Recently, the ALB health checks are failing for one of the web dispatchers, causing it to be taken out of service. You investigate and find that the web dispatcher is running and can be reached directly via its private IP. The health check is configured to check the /sap/public/health endpoint. What is the most likely reason for the health check failure?

Accepted Answer

The web dispatcher is configured to redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS, and the health check is using HTTP.. ALB health checks use the protocol configured on the target group. If the web dispatcher is configured to redirect HTTP to HTTPS (common in SAP NetWeaver setups), an HTTP health check to /sap/public/health receives a 301/302 redirect rather than a 200 OK, which the ALB treats as unhealthy. The fix is to configure the health check to use HTTPS or to allow the health endpoint to respond over HTTP without redirect.

Answer

The security group for the web dispatcher does not allow traffic from the ALB.

Answer

The web dispatcher instance is running out of memory, causing slow responses.

Answer

The web dispatcher has multiple IP addresses and the health check targets the wrong one.

Question 8

An SAP Basis administrator is deploying a new SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The architecture uses a multi-AZ deployment for high availability: primary database in us-east-1a, standby in us-east-1b. The ASCS instance is in us-east-1a with a replicated enqueue server (ERS) in us-east-1b. For the application servers, two instances are in us-east-1a and two in us-east-1b. The administrator needs to ensure that the SAP system remains available if an entire Availability Zone fails. What is the MOST important configuration step to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Enable HANA system replication and configure ASCS with enqueue replication across the two AZs.. To ensure SAP system availability if an entire Availability Zone fails, the most critical step is to enable HANA system replication for the database and configure ASCS with enqueue replication across the two AZs. This provides automatic failover for both the database and the central services, which are single points of failure. Without these, the system would not survive an AZ outage.

Answer

Configure Amazon Route53 with a failover routing policy for the SAP application URLs.

Answer

Place an Application Load Balancer in front of the database instances.

Answer

Use larger instance types for all SAP instances to handle the load.

Question 9

A company runs SAP BusinessObjects on AWS using multiple EC2 instances. The system uses a shared file system (EFS) for the repository and output files. Recently, users have reported that generating large reports takes much longer than usual. The SAP administrator checks the EFS metrics in CloudWatch and sees that the BurstCreditBalance is consistently near zero. The EFS file system is in General Purpose mode with default throughput settings. The current size of the file system is 500 GB. What should the administrator do to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Switch to Provisioned Throughput mode and set a higher value.. The EFS file system is in Bursting Throughput mode, and the BurstCreditBalance is near zero, indicating that the file system has exhausted its burst credits and is now limited to baseline throughput. Since the file system is 500 GB, its baseline throughput is 50 MB/s (500 GB * 0.1 MB/s per GB). To improve performance, the administrator should switch to Provisioned Throughput mode and set a higher throughput value, which provides dedicated throughput independent of burst credits.

Answer

Migrate the EFS file system to EFS One Zone for better performance.

Answer

Enable Max I/O throughput mode on the EFS file system.

Answer

Increase the size of the EFS file system by adding more data to it.

Question 10

A company is deploying SAP NetWeaver on AWS and needs to ensure that the SAP application servers can communicate with the SAP HANA database with the lowest possible latency. The SAP application servers and the HANA database will be in the same AWS Region. Which AWS networking configuration should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in the same VPC and the same subnet, and enable enhanced networking on the EC2 instances.. The lowest latency is achieved by placing both SAP application servers and the HANA database in the same VPC and subnet, and enabling enhanced networking on the EC2 instances. This minimizes network paths and maximizes performance, which is critical for SAP. Other options introduce additional network components or disable performance features.

Answer

Place the application servers in a public subnet and the HANA database in a private subnet, and use an internet gateway for communication.

Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in separate VPCs and connect them using AWS Transit Gateway with equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) routing.

Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in the same subnet but disable enhanced networking to reduce overhead.

Question 11

A company runs its SAP HANA database on an Amazon EC2 X1e instance in a single Availability Zone. The database must be highly available with an automatic failover to a standby instance in a second Availability Zone. The company wants to minimize the recovery time objective (RTO) and ensure that the standby node has the same data as the primary at all times. Which solution should a SAP on AWS specialist recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA system replication in sync mode with a Pacemaker cluster that manages an Amazon EC2 overlay IP address and uses a STONITH mechanism based on Amazon EC2 instance tags.. The correct solution is to use SAP HANA system replication in sync mode combined with a Pacemaker cluster that manages an overlay IP and uses STONITH based on EC2 instance tags. This is the SAP-certified high-availability pattern for SAP HANA on AWS. Sync mode ensures no data loss, and Pacemaker provides automatic failover, minimizing RTO. Other options either do not support cross-AZ HA, lack proper fencing, or are designed for disaster recovery rather than continuous availability.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to continuously replicate the primary EC2 instance to a standby instance in another Availability Zone, and configure a Route 53 failover routing policy.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA system replication in sync mode between the two EC2 instances and use an overlay IP address managed by Amazon Route 53 health checks to redirect clients.

Answer

Deploy the SAP HANA database on an Amazon EBS Multi-Attach volume and attach it to both EC2 instances, using a cluster file system for concurrent access.

Question 12

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS with a scale-out configuration across multiple EC2 instances. The database is experiencing performance degradation during peak loads. Monitoring shows that the network throughput between the HANA nodes is a bottleneck. Which action should the administrator take to improve network performance for the scale-out HANA system?

Accepted Answer

Enable Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) on all HANA nodes and configure the cluster to use EFA for inter-node communication.. EFA is designed to provide high-throughput, low-latency networking for distributed workloads like SAP HANA scale-out. It bypasses the operating system network stack, reducing overhead. Other options either do not address network throughput or could worsen latency. Therefore, enabling EFA is the correct action.

Answer

Place all HANA nodes in a spread placement group to ensure they are on distinct hardware, reducing network contention.

Answer

Configure the HANA nodes to use Amazon FSx for Lustre for shared storage, which will offload network traffic from the inter-node network.

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS volumes attached to each HANA node to improve I/O throughput, which will alleviate the network bottleneck.

Question 13

A company is migrating an SAP NetWeaver application to AWS and plans to use an Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system for the shared /sapmnt directory. The application servers run on Amazon EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones. The company requires that the file system be highly available and that the data be automatically replicated across Availability Zones. Which FSx for NetApp ONTAP deployment type should be used?

Accepted Answer

Multi-AZ deployment with automatic failover to a standby file server in a second Availability Zone.. The Multi-AZ deployment type for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is designed to provide high availability by automatically replicating data to a standby file server in a second Availability Zone. If the active file server or its AZ fails, FSx automatically fails over to the standby, ensuring continuous access to the shared /sapmnt directory. This meets the requirement for automatic cross-AZ replication and high availability for SAP NetWeaver.

Answer

Single-AZ deployment with a backup and restore strategy using AWS Backup.

Answer

Single-AZ deployment with a read-only replica in a second Availability Zone using NetApp SnapMirror.

Answer

Multi-AZ deployment with a cluster of two active file servers that serve data concurrently from both Availability Zones.

Question 14

A company is deploying SAP S/4HANA on AWS using a scale-out SAP HANA database with three worker nodes and one standby node. The database must be able to fail over automatically if a worker node becomes unavailable. Which AWS service or feature should be used to manage the cluster and automate the failover?

Accepted Answer

SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension. For SAP HANA scale-out on AWS, automatic failover requires a supported cluster manager that integrates with SAP HANA system replication. SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension provides the Pacemaker cluster, SAPHanaSR resource agents, and fencing needed to detect a failed worker and promote the standby node. Other AWS services do not provide the HANA-aware cluster resource management required for this scenario.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group with a launch template

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Automation runbook

Answer

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery

Question 15

A company is running an SAP HANA database on an Amazon EC2 instance with 4 TB of memory. The database is used for real-time analytics and requires the highest possible I/O performance. The company wants to use Amazon EBS volumes for storage. Which EBS volume type and configuration should be used to achieve the lowest latency and highest throughput?

Accepted Answer

Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express) volumes with multiple volumes in a RAID 0 configuration.. For a large SAP HANA database requiring the highest I/O performance, Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express) volumes are the correct choice. They offer the lowest latency and highest throughput, and when combined in a RAID 0 configuration, they can deliver the aggregated IOPS and throughput needed for real-time analytics. Other EBS volume types do not provide the necessary performance characteristics for this workload.

Answer

Cold HDD (sc1) volumes with Amazon EBS Multi-Attach enabled.

Answer

Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes with multiple volumes in a RAID 0 configuration.

Answer

General Purpose SSD (gp3) volumes with provisioned IOPS and throughput.