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

Question 1

A company is planning to migrate its SAP landscape to AWS. The landscape includes development, quality assurance, and production systems. The company wants to minimize costs by reusing resources across environments. Which AWS feature should be used to enforce resource tagging and compliance?

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

Accepted Answer

AWS Service Catalog with tag options.. AWS Service Catalog allows organizations to create and manage a catalog of approved IT services, and with tag options, it can enforce tagging and compliance policies. Option A is incorrect because AWS CloudFormation templates can include tags but do not enforce tagging policies across environments; they are for provisioning infrastructure. Option B is incorrect because AWS Resource Access Manager is used to share resources across accounts, not to enforce tagging or compliance. Option C is incorrect because AWS Config rules can monitor and enforce tagging compliance, but they are reactive rather than proactive governance; Service Catalog provides a more comprehensive solution for enforcing tagging during provisioning.

Answer

AWS CloudFormation templates with required tags.

Answer

AWS Resource Access Manager to share resources.

Answer

AWS Config rules to enforce tagging.

Question 2

A company is designing a backup strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. The HANA database is 2 TB in size. The company requires daily full backups and hourly incremental backups. Which AWS service should be used to store the backups cost-effectively with high durability?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier.. Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier is correct because S3 provides 99.999999999% durability and cost-effective storage for SAP HANA backups. Lifecycle policies automatically move older backups to lower-cost tiers like Glacier, reducing costs while meeting the 2 TB database's daily full and hourly incremental backup requirements.

Answer

Amazon EBS Snapshots stored in Amazon S3.

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway with volume gateway.

Answer

Amazon EFS for shared backup storage.

Question 3

Which THREE of the following are best practices for securing SAP systems on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Encrypt EBS volumes using AWS KMS.. Option A is correct because encrypting Amazon EBS volumes with AWS KMS protects SAP data at rest (including database files, redo/archive logs, and backups) and supports compliance requirements with centrally managed, auditable keys. Option B is correct because security groups act as stateful virtual firewalls at the ENI level, and restricting traffic between the SAP application tier and database tier to only the required ports (for example, SAP HANA 313/315, or SAP NetWeaver 32) enforces least-privilege network segmentation. Option C is correct because IAM roles for EC2 deliver temporary credentials via the instance metadata service (IMDS), eliminating long-lived access keys on SAP instances while granting scoped permissions to AWS services such as S3, KMS, or Backint-based backups. Option D is not correct because placing SAP instances in public subnets exposes them to the internet and violates AWS and SAP security best practices; SAP systems should reside in private subnets behind NAT gateways or load balancers. Option E is not correct because hard-coding AWS credentials in application code creates long-lived secrets that are hard to rotate and easily leaked; IAM roles or AWS Secrets Manager should be used instead.

Answer

Place all SAP instances in public subnets for easier access.

Answer

Store AWS credentials in the SAP application code for API access.

Question 4

A company is running a large SAP S/4HANA production system on AWS. The system consists of a single HANA database instance running on an r5.24xlarge EC2 instance (with 768 GB of RAM), and multiple application server instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The database uses six EBS io1 volumes for data and log files, each with 20,000 provisioned IOPS. The application servers are in an Auto Scaling group. Recently, the company experienced a prolonged database outage when the primary EC2 instance failed. The recovery took over 4 hours because a new instance had to be launched and snapshots restored. The company wants to improve the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to less than 30 minutes for the HANA database. They also want to minimize data loss with an RPO of less than 5 minutes. The company has a second AWS region (us-west-2) available for disaster recovery but prefers to keep costs low for the DR site. Which solution should the company implement?

Accepted Answer

Set up SAP HANA System Replication to a standby HANA instance in a different Availability Zone. Use a smaller instance type for the standby to reduce costs. Automate failover using a cluster manager like Pacemaker.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with a standby instance in a different Availability Zone provides synchronous replication, achieving an RPO of less than 5 minutes, and automated failover via a cluster manager like Pacemaker can bring the database online in under 30 minutes. Using a smaller instance for the standby reduces DR costs while still allowing the system to run in degraded mode during failover. This meets the RTO and RPO requirements without the high cost of a full-sized DR site in another region.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA System Replication to a standby instance in the same region but use a larger instance to ensure capacity.

Answer

Configure automated Amazon EBS snapshots every 5 minutes and create an AMI for the HANA instance. In the event of a failure, launch a new instance from the AMI in the same Availability Zone.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS for SAP HANA with Multi-AZ deployment to automatically failover to a standby in another Availability Zone.

Question 5

A company is preparing to migrate its SAP ECC 6.0 system to SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The current on-premises system includes a single application server and a database server running Oracle. The total database size is 1.5 TB. The company plans to use a homogeneous migration approach by exporting the existing Oracle database and importing it into a new SAP HANA database running on AWS. The migration must be completed within a tight weekend window. The company has established a 1 Gbps AWS Direct Connect connection to AWS. Which migration strategy should the company use to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Use the SAP Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO). Perform the migration in a weekend window using the delta replication feature.. SAP Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO) supports a homogeneous migration from Oracle to SAP HANA while performing both the system update and database migration in a single step. The delta replication feature allows initial full load followed by continuous replication of changes, enabling a short downtime window by switching over only after the delta catch-up is complete. This approach is specifically designed for tight migration windows and leverages the 1 Gbps Direct Connect for efficient data transfer.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate the Oracle database to HANA, and then switch over.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer to redirect traffic to the new HANA system after exporting the data to S3.

Answer

Use the SAP HANA Studio migration wizard to export the Oracle database and import it into HANA. This is the simplest method.

Question 6

A company runs SAP Business Warehouse (BW) on AWS. The BW system uses a single HANA database instance on an r5.12xlarge EC2 instance with 4 EBS io1 volumes for data. The company has noticed that during peak data loads, the CPU utilization on the HANA instance reaches 90%. An SAP consultant recommends increasing the CPU capacity. The company wants to minimize costs and avoid over-provisioning. What is the most cost-effective solution to increase CPU capacity for the HANA instance?

Accepted Answer

Change the EC2 instance type to a larger size in the r5 family, such as r5.16xlarge, to add more vCPUs.. The simplest and most cost-effective way to increase CPU capacity is to resize the EC2 instance to a larger instance type within the same family (e.g., r5.16xlarge or r5.24xlarge). This provides more vCPUs without needing to change the architecture. Option B is incorrect because increasing EBS volume IOPS does not add CPU capacity. Option C is incorrect because launching additional HANA instances for scale-out is complex and more expensive. Option D is incorrect because using a different instance family (e.g., compute-optimized) may require reconfiguration and is not as straightforward as resizing within the same family.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the EBS volumes to improve I/O performance.

Answer

Deploy additional HANA worker nodes and configure a scale-out system.

Answer

Migrate the HANA instance to a compute-optimized instance family, such as c5.

Question 7

A company runs SAP on AWS and wants to back up its SAP HANA database to Amazon S3. The database is 2 TB in size. The backup must be encrypted at rest in S3 and must be cost-effective. Which approach should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Install the SAP HANA Backint agent for Amazon S3 and configure it to use SSE-S3 encryption. The SAP HANA Backint agent for Amazon S3 is the AWS-recommended, native integration for backing up SAP HANA databases directly to S3. It supports SSE-S3 encryption at rest, ensuring cost-effective storage without manual intervention or additional infrastructure, and is designed to handle large databases like the 2 TB workload efficiently.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to directly back up the SAP HANA database to S3 with SSE-S3

Answer

Configure a cron job to copy the SAP HANA backup files from EBS to S3 using AWS CLI

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to export the database to a file on EBS and then manually upload to S3

Question 8

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system currently uses an Oracle database. The company wants to switch to a supported database on AWS. Which THREE database options are supported by SAP on AWS?

Accepted Answer

SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE). SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) (A) is a supported SAP-certified relational database that can run on AWS, so it qualifies as a valid target for an SAP ERP migration. IBM Db2 for SAP (C) is likewise an SAP-supported database platform available on AWS for SAP workloads. SAP HANA (E) is SAP's flagship in-memory database and is fully supported on AWS for SAP ERP (including S/4HANA), making it a correct option. SAP MaxDB (B) is not a supported database for SAP ERP on AWS in this context, and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL (D) is not an SAP-certified database for SAP ERP, so neither belongs among the correct answers.

Answer

SAP MaxDB

Answer

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL

Question 9

A company runs a large SAP ERP system on AWS. The SAP application servers are deployed across multiple Availability Zones using an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The SAP HANA database is a single-node instance on a large EC2 instance with EBS io1 volumes. The database experiences high write latency during peak hours. The administrator investigates and finds that the EBS volume write throughput is consistently at the maximum limit of 250 MB/s. The volume is 4 TB with 10,000 provisioned IOPS. The application servers are idle during the peak hour due to database slowness. The company needs a solution to reduce write latency without changing the application. Which solution should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the io1 volume to 20,000. The bottleneck is write throughput at 250 MB/s, which is the maximum throughput achievable with 10,000 provisioned IOPS on an io1 volume (assuming 256 KB I/O size). By increasing the provisioned IOPS to 20,000, the throughput doubles to 500 MB/s, directly reducing write latency. Option A is incorrect because EBS Multi-Attach is designed for shared volumes in multi-node clusters, not for a single-node HANA database. Option C is incorrect because EBS-optimized instances are already enabled by default on current-generation EC2 instances; additional configuration would not increase throughput. Option D is incorrect because changing to gp3 would require a volume type conversion and might not achieve the same IOPS performance; gp3 has a maximum of 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s throughput, but the simplest and most direct fix is to increase IOPS on the existing io1 volume.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach and add additional EC2 instances to share the volume

Answer

Enable EBS-optimized on the EC2 instance

Answer

Change the volume type to gp3 and increase throughput to 500 MB/s

Question 10

A company has deployed an SAP HANA database on AWS using a single EC2 instance with EBS volumes. The database is used for a critical SAP system. The company needs to ensure that the database can be restored to a point in time within the last 24 hours with minimal data loss. The administrator currently takes nightly EBS snapshots of the data and log volumes. However, recent tests show that recovery to a specific point in time (e.g., one hour ago) is not possible because the log volume is not backed up frequently enough. The administrator must implement a solution that allows point-in-time recovery with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which solution should the administrator implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA Backint agent to back up log files to Amazon S3 every 15 minutes. SAP HANA Backint enables log backups to Amazon S3 at frequent intervals (e.g., 15 minutes), allowing point-in-time recovery with minimal data loss. This is the native SAP HANA method for log backup and is efficient for achieving a 15-minute RPO. Option A is incorrect because EBS snapshots of the log volume every 15 minutes would be costly, cause I/O spikes, and are not recommended for frequent log backups. Option B is incorrect because Amazon DLM automates EBS snapshots but still suffers from the same cost and performance issues as option A. Option D is incorrect because Multi-Attach does not address backup and replication of logs does not provide a usable backup for point-in-time recovery.

Answer

Create EBS snapshots of the log volume every 15 minutes using a cron job

Answer

Use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) to schedule snapshots of the log volume every 15 minutes

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach on the log volume and attach it to a second instance to replicate logs

Question 11

An SAP system on AWS uses a shared file system for /sapmnt and /usr/sap/trans mounted from an EC2 instance running NFS. The NFS server experiences a failure causing downtime for all SAP application servers. The company wants a highly available shared file system with automatic failover. The budget is limited, and the company prefers a fully managed solution. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS provides a fully managed, highly available, and durable NFS file system that supports automatic failover across multiple Availability Zones. It is the ideal choice for the SAP /sapmnt and /usr/sap/trans shared file system because it eliminates the single point of failure of a self-managed NFS server, requires no manual failover configuration, and offers a pay-as-you-go model that fits a limited budget.

Answer

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Answer

Amazon EBS with a cluster file system

Answer

Amazon S3 with s3fs-fuse

Question 12

A company runs SAP HANA on EC2 with EBS io1 volumes. The administrator notices that the disk queue depth is consistently high during peak hours, causing increased latency. The volume is 2 TB with 5000 provisioned IOPS. The instance is an r5.4xlarge with EBS bandwidth of 4750 Mbps. The database workload is write-intensive. The administrator wants to reduce latency without increasing costs significantly. Which action should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS to 10,000. The io1 volume is already at 5000 provisioned IOPS, and the high disk queue depth during peak write-intensive load indicates the volume is IOPS-bound. Increasing provisioned IOPS to 10,000 raises the volume's IOPS ceiling and directly reduces queue depth and latency. Because io1 allows independent scaling of IOPS, this is the least disruptive and most cost-effective fix compared to changing instance class or volume type.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach and use multiple instances to share the volume

Answer

Change the volume type to gp3 with 5000 IOPS

Answer

Upgrade the EC2 instance to an r5.8xlarge

Question 13

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS and needs to ensure high availability for the SAP Central Services (ASCS/ERS) instance. Which TWO actions should be taken to achieve this? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure ASCS and ERS on separate EC2 instances in different Availability Zones.. Option A is correct because SAP high availability for the ASCS/ERS pair requires them to run on separate EC2 instances, and placing them in different Availability Zones protects against a single AZ failure so the ERS can take over the ASCS role (or vice versa) if one zone goes down. Option C is correct because SAP clients and the enqueue/replication mechanisms connect via a virtual hostname, and an AWS Network Load Balancer (Layer 4, TCP) supports a floating/elastic IP that can be moved to the standby node, preserving the SAP virtual hostname during failover. Option B is not appropriate because an Application Load Balancer operates at Layer 7 for HTTP/HTTPS and cannot handle the SAP enqueue and ASCS/ERS TCP-based protocols or provide the required floating IP behavior. Option D is wrong because co-locating ASCS and ERS on one EC2 instance creates a single point of failure, defeating the purpose of high availability. Option E is wrong because keeping both instances in the same Availability Zone leaves the solution vulnerable to an AZ-level outage, which is precisely what HA design must avoid.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic between ASCS and ERS instances.

Answer

Deploy both ASCS and ERS on the same EC2 instance to reduce latency.

Answer

Place both ASCS and ERS in the same Availability Zone to minimize network latency.

Question 14

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and wants to minimize downtime during the migration. Which THREE strategies should be considered? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration to speed up data transfer.. Option A is correct because Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration uses AWS edge locations and the AWS backbone network to accelerate uploads of large SAP export files to S3, reducing the data-transfer time that contributes to overall migration downtime. Option D is correct because SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) performs real-time, trigger-based replication from the source SAP system to the target, keeping the target synchronized while the source remains in production and minimizing the final cutover window. Option E is correct because AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) supports an initial full load followed by ongoing change data capture (CDC) replication, allowing the target database to stay current and shortening the downtime required at cutover. Option B is not appropriate because shutting down the source and doing a full export to S3 is a cold, high-downtime approach that contradicts the goal of minimizing downtime. Option C is also not appropriate because a full export and import confined to a maintenance window still requires the source to be offline for the entire operation, producing significant downtime rather than minimizing it.

Answer

Shut down the source system and perform a full database export to S3.

Answer

Perform a full export and import of the SAP system during a maintenance window.

Question 15

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS in a multi-AZ deployment. The SAP HANA database is 2 TB and uses EBS gp3 volumes. During a monthly patching cycle, the primary database fails over to the secondary, but the secondary takes over 30 minutes to come online. Which TWO changes would most likely reduce the failover time? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS and throughput on the EBS log volumes.. Option A is correct because SAP HANA failover recovery requires replaying the redo log from the EBS log volumes, and increasing provisioned IOPS and throughput on those gp3 log volumes directly speeds up log replay, shortening the time for the secondary to reach a consistent state and come online. Option B is correct because a cluster placement group packs the primary and secondary HANA instances close together with low-latency, high-throughput networking, which accelerates the log shipping and synchronization between nodes so the secondary can take over faster. Option C is not appropriate because mismatched instance types can create performance asymmetry and do not address the log replay or network latency bottleneck. Option D is wrong because placing all HANA nodes in a single AZ defeats the multi-AZ high-availability design and does not reduce failover time. Option E is incorrect because EBS optimization is an instance-level attribute already enabled by default on modern instance types and does not increase the IOPS or throughput needed for faster HANA log replay.

Answer

Use different EC2 instance types for primary and secondary to balance cost.

Answer

Deploy all HANA nodes in the same Availability Zone to reduce network latency.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the secondary instance's EBS volumes.