PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 12 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and needs to minimize network latency between the SAP application servers and the database. Which AWS service or feature should be used to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Place the application and database servers in the same placement group.. Placement groups in AWS, specifically cluster placement groups, provide low-latency network performance by ensuring that EC2 instances are placed in close physical proximity within a single Availability Zone. This minimizes network latency between SAP application servers and the database, meeting the requirement for high-throughput, low-latency communication critical for SAP ERP workloads.

Answer

Use AWS Global Accelerator for the application servers.

Answer

Set up VPC peering between the application and database VPCs.

Answer

Use an Elastic Load Balancer in front of the application servers.

Question 2

A company runs its SAP HANA database on an EC2 instance with Amazon EBS volumes. The system is experiencing high write latency. The current EBS volume type is gp2. Which change should a solutions architect recommend to improve write performance for the SAP HANA data volume?

Accepted Answer

Use an io2 Block Express volume with sufficient IOPS.. SAP HANA requires consistently low-latency, high-IOPS storage for its data volume. The io2 Block Express volume is the only EBS volume type that can deliver up to 256,000 IOPS per volume with sub-millisecond latency, meeting SAP HANA's demanding performance requirements. In contrast, gp2 volumes have burst limitations and cannot sustain the high write throughput needed for SAP HANA workloads.

Answer

Migrate the data to an instance store volume.

Answer

Change the volume type to gp3 with increased IOPS.

Answer

Use a Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volume.

Question 3

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for its SAP system on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1 and the DR site in us-west-2. The RTO is 4 hours and RPO is 1 hour. Which AWS service should be used for cross-region replication of the SAP HANA database backups stored in Amazon S3?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR).. Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is the correct choice because it automatically replicates objects (including SAP HANA database backups) from a source S3 bucket in us-east-1 to a destination bucket in us-west-2, meeting the 1-hour RPO by ensuring backups are available in the DR region within minutes of upload. CRR operates asynchronously at the object level, requires no additional infrastructure, and directly supports the stated requirement for cross-region replication of S3-stored backups without introducing extra latency or complexity.

Answer

AWS Backup with a cross-region backup plan.

Answer

Use AWS Storage Gateway to replicate backups.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the source bucket.

Question 4

An SAP system on AWS needs to be highly available across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). The SAP Central Services (ASCS) and the database are both critical. Which architecture should be used?

Accepted Answer

Deploy ASCS with a cluster across two AZs, and use HANA System Replication across two AZs.. Option B is correct because SAP ASCS requires a cluster (e.g., Pacemaker with SBD fencing) across two AZs to provide failover for the central services, while HANA System Replication (HSR) synchronously replicates the database to a secondary AZ for automatic failover. This dual-cluster architecture ensures both critical components remain highly available, meeting SAP's certified HA patterns on AWS.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic across AZs.

Answer

Place all components in a single AZ to avoid cross-AZ latency.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for the database and a single ASCS instance.

Question 5

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the system can be restored to a specific point in time within the last 24 hours with minimal data loss. The database is 2 TB in size. Which backup strategy meets these requirements with the lowest cost?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup with a daily backup and a 24-hour retention policy, enabling point-in-time recovery.. Option C is correct because AWS Backup for SAP HANA supports continuous backups and point-in-time recovery (PITR) with a 24-hour retention, meeting the requirement for minimal data loss. This managed service automates log backups every 5 minutes, enabling restore to any second within the retention window, and is more cost-effective than custom scripting or frequent EBS snapshots due to its incremental, deduplicated backup storage and no need for additional compute resources.

Answer

Configure S3 Transfer Acceleration for faster backup uploads.

Answer

Use a script to copy HANA backup files to S3 every 15 minutes.

Answer

Take hourly EBS snapshots of all HANA volumes and retain them for 24 hours.

Question 6

An SAP system uses Amazon EFS for shared file storage for transport directories. The system is deployed across multiple Availability Zones. Which EFS performance mode is most suitable for this workload?

Accepted Answer

General Purpose performance mode.. General Purpose performance mode is the most suitable for SAP transport directories because it provides the lowest latency for file operations, which is critical for the frequent, small I/O operations typical of SAP transport processes. Max I/O mode, while offering higher throughput for large sequential I/O, introduces higher latency that can degrade SAP performance. General Purpose mode is the default and recommended mode for most EFS workloads, including SAP shared file systems.

Answer

Max I/O performance mode.

Answer

Provisioned Throughput mode.

Answer

Bursting Throughput mode.

Question 7

A company is planning to run SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to use Auto Scaling for the application server tier. Which consideration is critical when implementing Auto Scaling for SAP application servers?

Accepted Answer

Automatically register new instances with the SAP Central Services instance.. Option D is correct because SAP application servers must be registered with the SAP Central Services instance (ASCS/SCS) to be recognized as part of the SAP system. Auto Scaling can launch new instances, but without automatic registration via sapstartsrv or the SAP Host Agent, the new instances will not be able to communicate with the Central Services instance, and the SAP system will not utilize them for workload.

Answer

Ensure the database can scale automatically with the application tier.

Answer

Enable termination protection on all Auto Scaling instances.

Answer

Use encrypted EBS volumes for all instances.

Question 8

A company has an SAP HANA database on an r5.8xlarge EC2 instance. The database is experiencing high CPU utilization during peak hours. The company wants to improve performance without changing the instance family. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Scale up to a larger instance size within the r5 family, such as r5.12xlarge.. The r5.8xlarge instance is experiencing high CPU utilization, and the requirement is to improve performance without changing the instance family. Scaling up to a larger instance size within the same r5 family, such as r5.12xlarge, provides more vCPUs and memory while maintaining compatibility with the existing SAP HANA workload and AWS architecture. This approach avoids the complexity of migrating to a different instance family and ensures that the SAP HANA database can leverage additional compute resources directly.

Answer

Change the instance type to x1e.32xlarge for more CPU.

Answer

Use a burstable performance instance like t3.2xlarge.

Answer

Enable CPU hyper-threading on the instance.

Question 9

An SAP system on AWS needs to send alerts when the CPU utilization of the application server exceeds 90% for more than 5 minutes. Which AWS service should be used to set up this monitoring?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it can monitor CPU utilization metrics for EC2 instances and trigger alarms based on thresholds. You can configure a CloudWatch alarm to evaluate the CPUUtilization metric over a 5-minute period and send notifications via Amazon SNS when the 90% threshold is breached.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 10

Which TWO of the following are best practices for running SAP HANA on AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use EBS-optimized instances or instances with dedicated EBS bandwidth.. Option B is correct because SAP HANA requires consistent, high-throughput I/O for its data and log volumes. EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated network bandwidth to Amazon EBS, eliminating contention with other traffic and ensuring the low-latency, high-IOPS performance that HANA demands. Without this dedicated bandwidth, EBS performance can degrade under load, risking database stability.

Answer

Use a burstable instance type (e.g., t3) for non-production HANA systems.

Answer

Configure a large swap space on the HANA instance to handle memory pressure.

Answer

Mount the HANA data volume using Amazon EFS for high throughput.

Question 11

Which THREE of the following are valid options for high availability of SAP HANA on AWS? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Storage replication using NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP.. Option A is correct because NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides storage-level replication that can be used for SAP HANA high availability. This solution replicates storage volumes between availability zones or regions, enabling failover at the storage layer independently of the database, which is a valid HA architecture for SAP HANA on AWS.

Answer

SAP HANA replication to a secondary region with asynchronous replication.

Answer

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for HANA.

Question 12

Which TWO of the following are recommended practices for securing SAP workloads on AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use security groups to restrict inbound traffic to only required ports and IP ranges.. Security groups act as a virtual firewall for EC2 instances, and restricting inbound traffic to only required ports (e.g., 3200 for SAP Application Server, 443 for SAP Web Dispatcher) and specific IP ranges minimizes the attack surface. This is a fundamental security best practice for any workload, including SAP, as it prevents unauthorized access to critical business applications.

Answer

Use the AWS root account for daily administration of SAP systems.

Answer

Assign public IP addresses to SAP instances for direct internet access.

Answer

Place SAP application servers in a public subnet for ease of access.

Question 13

An SAP workload is running on an EC2 instance in a private subnet. The application needs to access an S3 bucket for backups. Which AWS service should be used to enable private connectivity without traversing the internet?

Accepted Answer

VPC Endpoint (Gateway). A VPC Endpoint (Gateway) allows private connectivity between an EC2 instance in a private subnet and an S3 bucket without traversing the internet. It uses AWS’s internal network and route table entries to direct S3 traffic through the endpoint, ensuring data never leaves the AWS backbone. This is the correct choice for SAP workloads requiring secure, low-latency backups to S3.

Answer

Internet Gateway

Answer

NAT Gateway

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

Question 14

A company is migrating its SAP HANA database to AWS. The database requires high I/O and low latency. Which storage option should be used for the /hana/data volume?

Accepted Answer

io2 EBS volume. The /hana/data volume for SAP HANA requires high I/O and low latency, which is best met by io2 EBS volumes. io2 volumes are provisioned IOPS SSD volumes designed for latency-sensitive transactional workloads, offering up to 64,000 IOPS per volume and 99.999% durability, making them ideal for SAP HANA data files.

Answer

gp3 EBS volume

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EFS

Question 15

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing high latency for database queries. The administrator notices that the EBS volume used for /hana/log has a baseline IOPS of 5000 but the workload requires 8000 IOPS. What should the administrator do to resolve this?

Accepted Answer

Increase the volume size to gain additional baseline IOPS. Option D is correct because increasing the volume size of a gp3 or io1/io2 EBS volume directly increases its baseline IOPS performance. For gp3 volumes, baseline IOPS scales at a rate of 3 IOPS per GiB up to 16,000 IOPS, so increasing the volume size from approximately 1667 GiB (5000/3) to at least 2667 GiB (8000/3) would raise the baseline IOPS to 8000. This ensures consistent performance for /hana/log without relying on burst credits or migrating to a different volume type.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach

Answer

Enable volume bursting

Answer

Migrate to an io2 Block Express volume