PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 14 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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.. 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 2

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.. 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 3

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 4

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 5

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. 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

Question 6

Which AWS service is used to automate the installation and configuration of SAP applications on AWS according to best practices?

Accepted Answer

AWS Launch Wizard for SAP. AWS Launch Wizard for SAP is the correct service because it provides a guided, best-practice-based deployment experience specifically for SAP applications. It automatically provisions the necessary AWS infrastructure (EC2, EBS, VPC, etc.) and configures the SAP software according to AWS and SAP validated architectures, reducing manual effort and errors.

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS Quick Starts

Question 7

A company runs SAP ERP on AWS. The system needs to be highly available with automatic failover in case of an Availability Zone failure. Which architecture should be used?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication across two Availability Zones with automatic failover. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) across two Availability Zones with automatic failover is the correct architecture because it provides synchronous or asynchronous replication of the SAP HANA database at the storage or log level, enabling automatic failover to a standby instance in a different AZ when the primary fails. This meets the requirement for high availability and automatic failover during an AZ failure, as HSR is the native SAP mechanism for database-level HA on AWS, unlike generic AWS services that do not handle SAP-specific application state or replication requirements.

Answer

Route 53 failover routing policy

Answer

Auto Scaling group with multiple EC2 instances in different AZs

Answer

AWS RDS Multi-AZ deployment

Question 8

An administrator needs to back up SAP HANA database to S3 with encryption. The backup must be encrypted at rest in S3. Which combination of actions should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Configure S3 bucket with default encryption using SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS. Configuring an S3 bucket with default encryption using SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS ensures that backups written to S3 are automatically encrypted at rest. SSE-S3 uses Amazon-managed keys with AES-256, while SSE-KMS allows you to use AWS KMS customer managed keys (CMKs) for additional control. This meets the requirement for encryption at rest in S3 without requiring additional infrastructure or manual key management.

Answer

Use AWS CloudHSM to generate keys and store them in S3

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning and use S3-managed keys

Answer

Use AWS Backup to back up to S3 with default settings

Question 9

An SAP system on AWS is running on an r5.16xlarge instance. The system is experiencing network throughput bottlenecks. Which step should be taken to improve network performance?

Accepted Answer

Enable Enhanced Networking and install the ENA driver. Enabling Enhanced Networking and installing the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) driver is the standard method to achieve higher packet-per-second (PPS) performance, lower latency, and increased network bandwidth on supported instance types like r5.16xlarge. Without the ENA driver, the instance uses the older Xen network driver, which cannot utilize the full 25 Gbps network bandwidth available to r5 instances, leading to throughput bottlenecks.

Answer

Move the instance to a placement group

Answer

Attach an Elastic Fabric Adapter

Answer

Change the instance type to c5.18xlarge

Question 10

A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for SAP S/4HANA. The primary site is in us-east-1 and the DR site is in us-west-2. The RPO must be less than 30 minutes and RTO less than 2 hours. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure HANA System Replication in asynchronous mode with automatic takeover. HANA System Replication in asynchronous mode with automatic takeover meets the RPO of less than 30 minutes and RTO of less than 2 hours. Asynchronous replication provides near-real-time data transfer across AWS regions with minimal impact on primary performance, and automatic takeover enables fast failover to the DR instance, satisfying the RTO requirement.

Answer

Configure HANA System Replication in synchronous mode across regions

Answer

Take nightly backups to S3 and restore in DR

Answer

Use AWS Backup to copy daily snapshots to DR region

Question 11

An administrator is troubleshooting an SAP system where the application server cannot connect to the database server. Both servers are in the same VPC but different subnets. Security groups allow traffic on the database port. What is the next step to diagnose the issue?

Accepted Answer

Check the Network ACLs for both subnets to ensure inbound/outbound rules allow the database port. Network ACLs (NACLs) are stateless, meaning they require explicit inbound and outbound rules for traffic to flow in both directions. Even if security groups allow the database port, a missing or misconfigured NACL rule on either subnet can silently drop traffic. Since the servers are in different subnets, checking NACLs is the next logical step after confirming security groups are correct.

Answer

Check the DB Subnet Group configuration

Answer

Verify route tables for the subnets

Answer

Review VPC Flow Logs for rejected traffic

Question 12

Which TWO metrics should be monitored to ensure the health of an SAP HANA database running on AWS? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Disk I/O (read/write throughput). Disk I/O (read/write throughput) is critical for SAP HANA because HANA is an in-memory database that relies on persistent storage for savepoints, log writes, and data recovery. Insufficient disk throughput can cause performance degradation or system hangs, making it a key health metric.

Answer

Elastic Load Balancer Latency

Answer

S3 Bucket Size

Answer

CPU Credit Balance

Question 13

Which THREE considerations are important when designing a SAP workload for high availability on AWS? (Select three.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP application across multiple Availability Zones. In SAP high availability on AWS, deploying across multiple Availability Zones (Option B) protects against AZ failures, SAP HANA System Replication (Option E) ensures database failover, and using Amazon S3 for long-term backup storage (Option D) is a critical component of disaster recovery, which is integral to overall high availability design. Option A (EBS Multi-Attach) is not a standard HA practice due to limitations with concurrent writes and cluster file system requirements; typical shared storage uses Amazon EFS or FSx. Option C (single large instance) provides no redundancy, thus is not HA.

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach to share volumes between two EC2 instances

Answer

Run the SAP system on a single large instance

Question 14

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor the performance of SAP applications? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is correct because it provides comprehensive monitoring for SAP applications by collecting metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O, and network throughput from EC2 instances running SAP. You can set custom CloudWatch alarms to trigger actions when SAP-specific performance thresholds are breached, and integrate with SAP's CCMS (Computing Center Management System) via the AWS SAP Monitoring agent to pull SAP application-level metrics like dialog response times and buffer hit ratios.

Answer

AWS Config

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AWS Shield

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

Question 15

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system has strict high availability requirements with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours. The SAP application and database (SAP HANA) must be in the same AWS Region but can be in different Availability Zones. Which architecture should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP HANA in a Multi-AZ cluster using synchronous replication across two Availability Zones, with the SAP application servers in an Auto Scaling group across the same AZs.. It uses synchronous replication for SAP HANA across two Availability Zones, which ensures zero data loss and meets the RPO of 15 minutes. The Multi-AZ cluster with automatic failover achieves the RTO of 2 hours, while the SAP application servers in an Auto Scaling group across the same AZs provide high availability and load balancing. This architecture aligns with AWS best practices for SAP HANA HA, leveraging HANA System Replication (HSR) in sync mode.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA in a single Availability Zone with asynchronous replication to a secondary instance in another AZ, and use manual failover.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA on a single EC2 instance with EBS snapshots every 5 minutes, and use a secondary instance in another AZ with snapshots restored.

Answer

Deploy SAP HANA on a single EC2 instance with hourly backups to Amazon S3 and a script to restore the backup on a new instance in a different AZ.