PAS-C01 Technology — Timed 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a large on-premises NoSQL database that stores SAP-related data to Amazon DynamoDB as part of their AWS SAP environment. The database has tables with uneven access patterns, and some items are accessed infrequently but must be retained for compliance. The company wants to optimize costs without sacrificing performance. Which THREE strategies should the solutions architect recommend? (Choose THREE.)

15 minute time limit — choose an answer to begin.

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) to store infrequently accessed SAP HANA backup files.. The correct strategies are to use Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) for storing infrequently accessed SAP HANA backup files, as it provides lower storage costs with fast retrieval when needed, and to use Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached to cache frequently accessed database query results, reducing read load and improving performance for the DynamoDB-backed SAP environment. Option B is incorrect because SAP HANA's TTL would prematurely delete compliance data that must be retained. Option D is incorrect because disabling auto scaling would lead to either over-provisioning (higher costs) or performance issues. Option E is incorrect because S3 lifecycle policies transition data to Glacier, but the requirement is for infrequent access with retention, not archival; Glacier is for long-term archival where retrieval times are not as critical, and the data may need to be accessed occasionally, making S3 Standard-IA a better fit. These strategies optimize costs without sacrificing performance.

Answer

Use SAP HANA's built-in TTL feature to automatically delete expired compliance data.

Answer

Disable auto scaling for the SAP HANA EC2 instances to avoid unpredictable costs.

Question 2

A company runs a containerized application on Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type. The application needs to access an Amazon RDS database that is in a private subnet. The ECS tasks are also in private subnets. The security group for the RDS instance allows inbound traffic on port 3306 from the security group attached to the ECS tasks. However, the application cannot connect to the database. Which solution should the company implement to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Attach the same security group to the ECS tasks and the RDS instance, and ensure the security group has an inbound rule allowing traffic from itself on port 3306. When using security group IDs in inbound rules, the traffic is evaluated based on the source security group's network interfaces, not the IP addresses. However, for this to work, the security group must be attached to the ECS tasks' elastic network interfaces (ENIs). By attaching the same security group to both the ECS tasks and the RDS instance, and adding a self-referencing inbound rule for port 3306, the RDS instance will accept traffic from any resource that has that security group attached, including the ECS tasks. This resolves the connectivity issue because the security group rule correctly identifies the source by the security group ID, not by IP.

Answer

Configure the ECS task definition to assign a public IP address to the tasks and ensure the tasks have a route to the internet via a NAT gateway

Answer

Place both the ECS tasks and the RDS instance in the same public subnet to ensure network connectivity

Answer

Modify the RDS security group inbound rule to allow traffic from the CIDR block of the ECS tasks’ private subnets instead of the security group ID

Question 3

Drag and drop the steps to optimize SAP HANA performance by moving to an SAP HANA instance on AWS EC2 into the correct order.

Accepted Answer

1. Assess current performance and requirements
2. Size the target EC2 instance
3. Migrate data using AWS DMS or similar
4. Configure EC2 parameters and settings
5. Test and validate performance. Performance optimization via EC2 migration involves assessment, sizing, data migration, configuration, and testing.

Answer

1. Size the target EC2 instance
2. Migrate data
3. Configure EC2 settings
4. Assess current performance
5. Test performance

Answer

1. Migrate data
2. Configure EC2 settings
3. Assess current performance
4. Size the target EC2 instance
5. Test performance

Answer

1. Configure EC2 settings
2. Assess current performance
3. Size the target EC2 instance
4. Migrate data
5. Test performance

Question 4

An SAP system running on AWS uses a large memory-optimized instance (e.g., u-6tb1.metal). The system administrator notices that SAP workloads are occasionally hitting memory swap, causing performance degradation. The SAP application is configured to use SAP HANA. What is the most effective solution to address this issue?

Accepted Answer

Configure HANA Large Pages to reduce memory fragmentation. Configuring HANA Large Pages reduces memory fragmentation and improves memory management efficiency, which can help alleviate memory pressure and reduce swap usage. SAP HANA recommends using large pages to optimize memory allocation and minimize overhead. Option A is incorrect because HANA memory overcommit and KSM are not recommended for HANA; KSM can cause performance overhead and unpredictability, and overcommit is not a standard practice. Option C is a monitoring solution that does not address the root cause. Option D increases swap space, which only masks the problem and can degrade performance further.

Answer

Enable HANA memory overcommit and use Kernel Same-page Merging (KSM) to reduce memory pressure

Answer

Set up a CloudWatch alarm to notify when memory usage exceeds 90%

Answer

Increase swap space on an attached EBS volume

Question 5

A company wants to set up an SAP HANA system replication across two AWS Regions for disaster recovery. Which AWS service should they use to achieve the lowest possible recovery point objective (RPO)?

Accepted Answer

AWS Direct Connect. AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated, private network connection between on-premises or AWS regions, offering consistent low latency and high throughput essential for SAP HANA system replication. This minimizes data loss during log shipping, achieving the lowest possible RPO compared to internet-based options.

Answer

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Question 6

Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing an EC2 instance type for an SAP HANA production system? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

The instance type must be certified by SAP for HANA.. SAP HANA requires specific hardware certification to ensure compatibility and performance. AWS provides a list of EC2 instance types that have been certified by SAP for running HANA production workloads, and using a non-certified instance can lead to instability, lack of support, and potential data integrity issues.

Answer

The instance type should include instance store volumes for data persistence.

Answer

The instance must include GPU acceleration for HANA operations.

Question 7

A company runs SAP on AWS and uses a Multi-AZ RDS for SAP HANA as the database. The database instance is m5.8xlarge with 1000 GB of gp2 storage. The application team reports that write latency spikes during peak hours. The average write throughput is 200 MB/s. Which change would most effectively reduce write latency?

Accepted Answer

Change the volume type to Provisioned IOPS (io1 or io2). The scenario involves a Multi-AZ RDS instance using gp2 storage. gp2 volumes in RDS have a burst-bucket model; for a 1000 GB volume, baseline performance is 3000 IOPS, which cannot sustain the required 200 MB/s write throughput (approximately 12,800 IOPS with 16 KB block size). Sustained high throughput leads to burst credit exhaustion, causing latency spikes. Option A (increasing volume size) improves baseline IOPS but still insufficient; Option B (EBS Auto Scaling) is not applicable to RDS; Option C (st1) is throughput-optimized but not suitable for latency-sensitive databases. Provisioned IOPS (io1/io2) provides guaranteed, consistent performance, eliminating latency spikes for SAP HANA.

Answer

Increase the volume size to 2000 GB

Answer

Enable EBS Auto Scaling on the volume

Answer

Change the volume type to Throughput Optimized (st1)

Question 8

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for SAP on AWS. The primary region is us-east-1 and the DR region is us-west-2. The SAP HANA database is 2 TB. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 15 minutes and the recovery time objective (RTO) is 4 hours. Which solution meets these requirements most cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

HANA System Replication in asynchronous mode. HANA System Replication in asynchronous mode meets the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 4 hours for a 2 TB database while being more cost-effective than synchronous replication, which would introduce latency and require high-bandwidth, low-latency links. Asynchronous replication allows the secondary system to lag slightly behind the primary, which is acceptable for a 15-minute RPO, and avoids the performance impact on the primary system that synchronous mode would impose over a long-distance link.

Answer

HANA System Replication in synchronous mode

Answer

Log shipping to an S3 bucket in DR region

Answer

EBS snapshot replication to DR region using AWS Backup

Question 9

A company is running an SAP HANA database on an AWS EC2 instance. The SAP application team reports occasional performance issues during peak hours. The CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization. What is the MOST cost-effective solution to address this issue?

Accepted Answer

Migrate the instance to a larger instance type permanently.. For a single SAP HANA database instance, scaling up by migrating to a larger instance type (Option A) is the most effective solution because HANA databases are designed to scale vertically and cannot distribute CPU load across multiple instances. Option C is incorrect because Auto Scaling adds instances horizontally, which does not alleviate CPU pressure on the database server. Option A addresses the high CPU utilization directly and, when selecting a cost-optimized instance size, is more cost-effective than over-provisioning permanently or using inefficient scaling methods.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the instance.

Answer

Implement an EC2 Auto Scaling group with a scheduled scaling policy to add instances during peak hours.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS for the EBS volumes attached to the instance.

Question 10

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 11

Refer to the exhibit. A CloudFormation stack for an SAP deployment is in state UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The stack update failed and the subsequent rollback also failed. The state UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED in AWS CloudFormation indicates that the stack update operation failed, and then the automatic rollback to the previous stable state also failed. This is the most direct interpretation of the state name, making option C correct. The rollback can fail due to issues such as resource dependencies, insufficient permissions during rollback, or a resource being in a state that prevents deletion or reversion.

Answer

The stack update was attempted without sufficient IAM permissions

Answer

The stack has drifted from the template configuration

Answer

A resource in the stack was deleted outside of CloudFormation

Question 12

Refer to the exhibit. An SAP HANA database backup fails with 'Cannot allocate memory'. The EC2 instance type is r5.2xlarge with 64 GB RAM. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The HANA backup process requires more memory than available. The error 'Cannot allocate memory' indicates that the SAP HANA backup process is attempting to allocate more memory than the system can provide. On an r5.2xlarge instance with 64 GB RAM, the HANA database and its backup operations (including memory-intensive savepoints and data snapshots) can exhaust available memory, especially if the HANA instance is configured to use a large portion of the RAM. This is a common memory constraint issue where the backup process fails because the operating system's memory allocation fails, not because of disk or network limitations.

Answer

The instance does not have enough swap space

Answer

The EBS volume is too small for the backup

Answer

The network bandwidth to the backup target is insufficient

Question 13

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue on an SAP HANA database running on an r5.8xlarge EC2 instance. The application team reports that queries are slow during peak hours. CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization and high memory usage. Which instance type should the administrator choose to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

r5.24xlarge. The r5.24xlarge provides more CPU and memory than r5.8xlarge. Option A (m5.24xlarge) is wrong because m5 instances are general purpose and may not have enough memory for SAP HANA. Option B (t3.2xlarge) is wrong because t3 instances are burstable and not suitable for production HANA workloads. Option D (r5b.8xlarge) is wrong because while r5b is similar, it does not provide the additional CPU and memory required; upgrading to a larger instance size is more appropriate.

Answer

m5.24xlarge

Answer

t3.2xlarge

Answer

r5b.8xlarge

Question 14

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and needs to maintain high availability. The SAP Central Services (ASCS) and ERS instances are currently on two separate physical servers. The company wants to use a single EC2 instance for both roles with Pacemaker clustering. Which configuration ensures that both instances can run simultaneously on the same host?

Accepted Answer

Install both ASCS and ERS on the same EC2 instance using the SAP NetWeaver 7.4 or later 'same host' capability.. SAP NetWeaver 7.4 and later support the 'same host' configuration for ASCS and ERS, allowing both instances to run simultaneously on the same EC2 instance without requiring separate virtual servers or complex networking. Option A is incorrect because a Dedicated Host is not needed; the 'same host' capability works on any EC2 instance. Option B is incorrect because two ENIs are not required; a single ENI suffices. Option C is incorrect because although assigning multiple private IPs is possible, it is not the standard or necessary configuration; SAP's built-in 'same host' feature handles the binding without manual IP assignment.

Answer

Use a Dedicated Host and configure two separate virtual servers using VMware on AWS.

Answer

Configure two network interfaces (ENIs) on the instance, one for ASCS and one for ERS.

Answer

Assign multiple private IP addresses to the same ENI and configure ASCS and ERS to bind to different IPs.

Question 15

An SAP administrator has created the following IAM policy and attached it to an IAM role used by an EC2 instance running SAP HANA:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "s3:ListBucket",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::sap-backup-bucket/*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "s3:GetObject",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::sap-backup-bucket/*"
    }
  ]
}

The instance needs to download backup files from the S3 bucket 'sap-backup-bucket' and then stop itself after the backup is complete. However, the backup script fails with an access denied error when trying to list the bucket. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The policy does not allow the s3:ListBucket action on the bucket ARN [CORRECT]. The IAM policy must grant the s3:ListBucket permission on the bucket ARN itself (arn:aws:s3:::sap-backup-bucket) to allow listing objects. The policy includes s3:ListBucket but only on the object ARN (arn:aws:s3:::sap-backup-bucket/*), not on the bucket ARN. This causes the 'ListObjects' API call to fail with an access denied error when the script attempts to list the bucket contents. The s3:GetObject permission on the object ARN is correctly specified for downloading files, but without s3:ListBucket on the bucket ARN, the list operation is denied.

Answer

The S3 bucket is encrypted and the policy does not allow kms:Decrypt [wrong]

Answer

The policy does not include the ec2:StopInstances permission [wrong]

Answer

The instance does not have an internet gateway to reach S3 [wrong]