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

Question 1

An SAP application on AWS is experiencing high network latency and packet loss between the SAP application server and the SAP HANA database. The application and database are in the same AWS Region and Availability Zone. What is the most likely cause?

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

Accepted Answer

TCP segmentation offloading (TSO) is enabled on the HANA database instance.. C is correct because TCP segmentation offloading (TSO) on the HANA database instance can cause the network interface to deliver oversized TCP segments to the SAP application server, which may not handle them correctly, leading to packet loss and high latency. This is a known issue in SAP on AWS environments where TSO offloads segmentation to the NIC, but if the receiving side lacks proper support or the network path has MTU mismatches, fragmentation and retransmissions occur.

Answer

Jumbo frames are enabled on the application server but not on the database server.

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The instances are not in a placement group.

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The Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) driver is not installed.

Question 2

A company is migrating an SAP S/4HANA system to AWS and needs to choose the storage for the HANA database. The database requires high IOPS and low latency. Which AWS storage solution is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes are designed for mission-critical SAP HANA workloads, offering up to 256,000 IOPS per volume and sub-millisecond latency. They provide 99.999% durability and are the only EBS volume type certified by SAP for production HANA databases on AWS, meeting the high IOPS and low latency requirements.

Answer

Amazon EFS

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Amazon S3

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Amazon EBS st1 volumes

Question 3

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and wants 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. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) to replicate the HANA server to the DR region.. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) provides continuous block-level replication of the entire SAP HANA server, including OS, application, and data volumes, with sub-minute RPO and RTO of minutes to hours. This meets the 15-minute RPO and 2-hour RTO requirements by enabling rapid failover to a fully provisioned instance in the DR region without manual scaling or data loss from periodic snapshots.

Answer

Configure HANA System Replication (HSR) to a small instance in the DR region and scale up on failover.

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Take daily EBS snapshots of the HANA data volumes and copy them to the DR region.

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Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate HANA to an RDS instance in the DR region.

Question 4

An SAP customer wants to reduce the cost of running a non-production SAP system on AWS. The system is used only during business hours (8 AM to 6 PM) on weekdays. What is the most cost-effective solution?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Instance Scheduler to stop instances outside business hours.. Using AWS Instance Scheduler allows you to automatically stop instances outside business hours, reducing costs significantly for systems used only during specific times. Option A is incorrect because Reserved Instances are best for steady-state usage and would still incur costs for hours when the system is not needed. Option B is incorrect because Compute Savings Plans also require consistent usage to be cost-effective and do not eliminate charges for idle hours. Option C is incorrect because running On-Demand instances without scheduling does not reduce costs, as you pay for every hour regardless of usage.

Answer

Purchase Reserved Instances for 1-year term.

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Purchase Compute Savings Plans for 3-year term.

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Run the instances as On-Demand without any schedule.

Question 5

A company is deploying SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the database and application servers are in the same placement group to minimize latency. However, the instance types required for the HANA database are not available in the same placement group due to insufficient capacity. What should the company do to maintain low latency?

Accepted Answer

Use a spread placement group instead of a cluster placement group.. A spread placement group is the correct choice because it spreads instances across distinct underlying hardware, reducing the risk of correlated failures while still keeping them in the same Availability Zone to minimize latency. Unlike a cluster placement group, which requires all instances to be on the same rack and can suffer from capacity constraints, a spread placement group does not enforce a single rack placement, so it can accommodate different instance types even when the cluster placement group lacks capacity. This ensures low latency for SAP S/4HANA communication between database and application servers without violating placement group constraints.

Answer

Place all instances in the same Availability Zone without a placement group.

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Use a different instance type for the database that is available in the placement group.

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Place the database in a different AWS Region and use AWS Direct Connect.

Question 6

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance degradation. The CloudWatch metrics show that the EBS volumes used for the HANA data files have an average queue length of 10 and average latency of 50 ms. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The EBS volume's provisioned IOPS are insufficient for the workload.. An average EBS queue length of 10 and average latency of 50 ms indicate that the volume is saturated with I/O requests. The queue length persistently exceeds the recommended threshold (typically <1 for optimal performance), and latency spikes above the 1–10 ms range for gp3 or io2 volumes. This directly points to insufficient provisioned IOPS for the SAP HANA workload, causing requests to queue up and wait for service.

Answer

EBS encryption is causing additional overhead.

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EBS snapshots are being taken too frequently.

Answer

EBS optimization is not enabled on the instance.

Question 7

A company wants to implement a backup strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. The backup must be stored securely and be accessible for restore to a different AWS Region. Which combination of AWS services should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup with cross-region backup copy. AWS Backup with cross-region backup copy is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, policy-driven backup service that natively supports SAP HANA on Amazon EC2, including automated cross-region copy for disaster recovery. This ensures backups are stored securely (encrypted at rest and in transit) and can be restored in a different AWS Region without manual intervention.

Answer

Take EBS snapshots and copy them to another region

Answer

Store HANA backups in Amazon S3 Standard-IA

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Question 8

Which THREE of the following are valid considerations for designing SAP workloads on AWS to achieve high availability within a single AWS Region? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use a cluster with a shared file system (e.g., Amazon EFS or FSx) for SAP ASCS. SAP ASCS (ABAP Central Services) requires a shared file system for the global transport directory and instance profiles to enable failover between cluster nodes. Amazon EFS or FSx for NetApp ONTAP provide the necessary NFS-based shared storage that supports the SAP enqueue replication and message server services during a failover event.

Answer

Use AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) for SAP Enqueue Replication 2 (ENSA2)

Answer

Use HANA scale-out with HSR across two nodes for high availability

Question 9

A company is migrating its SAP HANA database to AWS. Which instance type is specifically designed for SAP HANA and certified for production workloads?

Accepted Answer

x1e.xlarge. The x1e.xlarge instance is part of the AWS X1e family, which is specifically designed for memory-intensive workloads like SAP HANA and is certified by SAP for production deployments. SAP HANA requires large memory footprints and high memory-to-vCPU ratios, which the X1e instances provide with up to 3,904 GiB of memory and 128 vCPUs, meeting SAP's certification requirements.

Answer

c5.xlarge

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r5.xlarge

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t3.xlarge

Question 10

An SAP administrator notices that the SAP application server on AWS is experiencing high latency when connecting to the SAP HANA database. The database is on a separate EC2 instance in the same VPC. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Enhanced Networking is not enabled on the EC2 instances.. High latency between an SAP application server and a SAP HANA database in the same VPC is most likely caused by Enhanced Networking not being enabled on the EC2 instances. Enhanced Networking uses the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) to provide higher bandwidth, higher packet-per-second performance, and consistently lower inter-instance latencies. Without it, network traffic is handled by the Xen or Nitro hypervisor's default driver, which introduces additional overhead and latency, especially under the high-throughput, low-latency requirements of SAP HANA communication.

Answer

EBS optimization is not enabled on the application server.

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The HANA database is using a public IP address.

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The instances are not in a placement group.

Question 11

An SAP Basis team is designing a high-availability architecture for SAP NetWeaver on AWS. They plan to use a shared file system for the transport directory and SAP profiles across multiple availability zones. Which AWS storage service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, NFS-based shared file system that is accessible from multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones. For SAP NetWeaver, the transport directory and SAP profiles must be concurrently accessible from all application servers in a high-availability setup, and EFS supports the required POSIX permissions and locking semantics needed by SAP.

Answer

Amazon EBS with multi-attach

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Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

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Amazon S3

Question 12

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS. They want to implement automated backups for the SAP HANA database using AWS Backup. Which AWS service should they use to orchestrate the HANA backup?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. AWS Backup natively supports SAP HANA databases by integrating with the SAP HANA Backint agent, which allows you to define backup policies, retention rules, and cross-region copy directly from the AWS Backup console. This eliminates the need for custom scripting or manual orchestration, making it the correct service for automating HANA backups on AWS.

Answer

AWS Lambda

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Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager

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AWS Systems Manager

Question 13

During a SAP migration to AWS, the team needs to ensure that the SAP license is compliant. Which of the following is a requirement for running SAP production systems on AWS?

Accepted Answer

The EC2 instance must be SAP-certified and the number of SAPS must be licensed.. AWS requires that for running SAP production systems, the EC2 instance must be SAP-certified (listed in the SAP Certified and Supported Hardware Directory) and the customer must have licensed the appropriate number of SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) units for the instance type. This ensures the infrastructure meets SAP's performance and support requirements, and that the license covers the compute capacity used.

Answer

The company must use AWS Enterprise Support.

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The company must notify SAP of the migration to AWS.

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The company must use a specific AWS region.

Question 14

An SAP system administrator needs to monitor the memory usage of SAP HANA on AWS. Which CloudWatch metric or log should be used to track HANA memory consumption?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA CloudWatch integration via SQL queries. SAP HANA exposes memory consumption metrics via built-in SQL views (e.g., M_HOST_MEMORY, M_MEMORY), and the SAP HANA CloudWatch integration uses a dedicated AWS Lambda function to execute these SQL queries and push the results as custom CloudWatch metrics. This is the only option that directly captures HANA-specific memory usage, such as allocation limit, used memory, and heap memory, rather than generic OS-level metrics.

Answer

CloudWatch Logs from HANA trace files

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EC2 instance-level memory metrics

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AWS CloudWatch Agent for OS metrics

Question 15

A company is setting up a disaster recovery (DR) site for SAP on AWS. They need to replicate the SAP HANA database to another region. Which AWS service is BEST suited for this?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native, SAP-supported mechanism for replicating HANA databases asynchronously or synchronously across regions. It replicates at the database level using log shipping and is the only option that maintains full SAP HANA consistency, transaction integrity, and support for takeover in a DR scenario.

Answer

AWS Backup cross-region copy

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication