PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 17 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs an SAP S/4HANA production system on AWS using an r5.24xlarge EC2 instance with 768 GiB of memory and a single SAP HANA tenant. The SAP Basis team reports that during month-end closing, the HANA database experiences memory pressure and starts swapping, causing severe performance degradation. The instance is currently configured with 768 GiB of memory, and the HANA global_allocation_limit is set to 600 GiB. Which action should the SAP administrator take to resolve the memory pressure without changing the instance type?

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

Accepted Answer

Reduce the HANA global_allocation_limit to a value that leaves sufficient memory for the OS and other processes, and analyze memory consumers to optimize data model and table compression.. The correct approach is to set global_allocation_limit to a value that leaves adequate memory for the OS and other processes, and then investigate memory consumers to optimize the data model. This directly addresses the root cause—HANA using more memory than safely available—without requiring a larger instance. It prevents swapping and improves performance during peak loads.

Answer

Enable SAP HANA dynamic tiering to offload cold data to a secondary disk-based store.

Answer

Increase the HANA global_allocation_limit to 720 GiB to allow HANA to use more memory.

Answer

Migrate the HANA database to an r5.24xlarge instance with a larger EBS volume to increase swap space.

Question 2

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS with an Oracle database on an EC2 instance. The database is experiencing high write latency. The instance uses a single gp2 EBS volume for data and a separate gp2 volume for redo logs. The company wants to improve write performance with minimal downtime. Which change should be made?

Accepted Answer

Replace the gp2 volumes with io2 volumes and provision sufficient IOPS for the workload.. Oracle redo logs require high write throughput and low latency. gp2 volumes can suffer from burst credit depletion, leading to latency spikes. io2 volumes provide consistent IOPS and low latency, and they can be provisioned with the necessary performance. This upgrade can be performed with minimal downtime by replacing volumes, making it the best choice to improve write performance.

Answer

Move the redo logs to an instance store volume and keep the data on gp2.

Answer

Replace the gp2 volumes with io2 Block Express volumes and enable Multi-Attach.

Answer

Replace the gp2 volumes with gp3 volumes and increase the provisioned IOPS.

Question 3

A company is deploying a new SAP S/4HANA production system on AWS. The SAP HANA database will run on a single EC2 instance using an x2gd.16xlarge with 1 TB of memory. The company requires the highest possible availability for the database within a single Availability Zone without application-level clustering. Which storage and deployment configuration should be used for the SAP HANA data and log volumes?

Accepted Answer

Use multiple io2 Block Express EBS volumes in a RAID 0 configuration for data, and a separate io2 volume for log.. For SAP HANA on AWS, the storage design must meet SAP's KPIs for IOPS and latency. Using io2 Block Express volumes in a RAID 0 configuration for data provides the necessary performance, while a separate io2 volume for log ensures dedicated write throughput. This approach also maintains data persistence and high availability within a single Availability Zone.

Answer

Use a single gp3 EBS volume for both data and log, attached to the instance.

Answer

Use an instance store NVMe SSD for data and an EBS gp2 volume for log.

Answer

Use a single io1 EBS volume for data and log, with a high provisioned IOPS setting.

Question 4

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on a single AWS Availability Zone with an SAP HANA database on an x1e.16xlarge EC2 instance. To improve availability, they deploy a secondary HANA system in a different Availability Zone using SAP HANA System Replication. The database must be able to fail over automatically without manual intervention. The company also wants to minimize RPO. Which AWS service should be used to manage the failover and maintain the replication configuration?

Accepted Answer

AWS Launch Wizard for SAP with SAP HANA System Replication. AWS Launch Wizard for SAP is the only option that natively supports SAP HANA System Replication deployment and configuration for automated failover. It provisions the necessary infrastructure and cluster resources, reducing manual steps and helping to meet a low RPO. The other options either lack SAP HANA awareness or require significant custom development that is not suited for reliable automated failover.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling with a launch template

Answer

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Automation with a custom runbook

Question 5

A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for their SAP HANA database on AWS. The primary database runs on an EC2 instance in the us-east-1 Region. The RTO is 15 minutes and the RPO is 5 minutes. The company wants to minimize cost while meeting these objectives. Which approach should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Implement SAP HANA system replication to a secondary EC2 instance in us-east-1 with synchronous mode and automatic failover.. Synchronous SAP HANA system replication within the same AWS Region provides zero data loss and fast failover, satisfying the 5-minute RPO and 15-minute RTO. It avoids the higher costs and latency of cross-Region replication while ensuring high availability. The secondary instance can be in a different Availability Zone for resilience, and automatic failover can be configured using SAP HANA HA/DR providers.

Answer

Set up a pilot light environment in us-west-2 with periodic SAP HANA backups copied to Amazon S3 and restore only during a disaster.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take hourly snapshots of the SAP HANA database and restore to a new EC2 instance in us-east-1 when needed.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA system replication to a secondary EC2 instance in us-west-2 with asynchronous mode and continuous log shipping.

Question 6

A company is deploying a new SAP S/4HANA system on AWS using a single Availability Zone (AZ) for the SAP HANA database and a separate AZ for the SAP application servers. The application servers must communicate with the HANA database with the lowest possible latency and highest throughput. Which network design should be implemented to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in the same VPC but in different subnets within the same Availability Zone, and enable enhanced networking on all EC2 instances.. The lowest latency and highest throughput between SAP application servers and a HANA database are achieved by keeping them within the same Availability Zone and VPC, while using separate subnets for security. Enhanced networking on EC2 instances reduces CPU overhead and improves packet-per-second performance. This combination directly addresses the requirement without introducing unnecessary network components.

Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in the same VPC, and configure the application servers to use the HANA database's private IP address within the same subnet.

Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in separate VPCs, and connect them using an AWS Transit Gateway with equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) routing.

Answer

Place the application servers and the HANA database in the same VPC, and use AWS PrivateLink to connect the application subnet to the database subnet.

Question 7

A company runs an SAP NetWeaver ABAP application server on a single EC2 instance in a single Availability Zone. The company wants to improve availability by adding a second application server in a different Availability Zone within the same AWS Region. The SAP system uses an Oracle database running on a separate EC2 instance in the first Availability Zone. The company wants the application servers to be able to communicate with each other and with the database, and wants to minimize latency for database access. What should the SAP administrator do to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a new subnet in a different Availability Zone, launch the second application server there, and ensure that the SAP message server and database are accessible via private IP addresses within the VPC.. To improve availability, the second application server must be in a different Availability Zone. The SAP message server and database must be accessible from both application servers. Using private IP addresses within the VPC ensures secure and low-latency communication. The message server does not directly connect to the database; it manages application server registration and communication. The database connection is configured separately in each application server's profile. This design provides high availability for the application layer while maintaining database connectivity.

Answer

Create a new subnet in a different Availability Zone, launch the second application server there, and configure the SAP message server to use the private IP address of the database.

Answer

Place the second application server in the same subnet as the first application server, and configure the SAP message server to use the private IP address of the database.

Answer

Create a new subnet in a different Availability Zone, launch the second application server there, and configure the SAP message server to use the private IP addresses of both application servers.

Question 8

A company is planning to migrate its SAP NetWeaver application servers to AWS. The application servers currently run on physical servers with 16 vCPUs and 128 GB of RAM. The company wants to minimize costs while ensuring the application servers have sufficient resources. Which EC2 instance family is the most cost-effective choice for the application servers?

Accepted Answer

m5.4xlarge. For SAP NetWeaver application servers, a general-purpose instance like m5.4xlarge often provides the best cost-performance balance. It offers 16 vCPUs and 64 GB of RAM, which is typically sufficient for application servers that do not have the same memory demands as the SAP HANA database. Memory-optimized instances like r5 or x1e are more expensive and over-provisioned for this use case, while compute-optimized c5 may lack sufficient memory. Therefore, m5.4xlarge is the most cost-effective choice.

Answer

r5.4xlarge

Answer

c5.4xlarge

Answer

x1e.4xlarge

Question 9

An SAP NetWeaver application server is running on an Amazon EC2 instance in a private subnet. The application needs to access an on-premises SAP HANA database over a private network connection. The company has set up an AWS Site-to-Site VPN. The application is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues and high latency. Which action should be taken to improve the reliability and performance of the connection?

Accepted Answer

Configure the VPN connection to use dynamic routing with BGP and set up two tunnels across different Availability Zones. To improve the reliability and performance of a Site-to-Site VPN connection, it is best to leverage its inherent redundancy by configuring dynamic routing with BGP and ensuring the two tunnels are terminated in different Availability Zones. This enables automatic failover and can optimize traffic paths. Other options like Global Accelerator or upgrading the VPN gateway are not applicable, and switching to Direct Connect is a larger architectural change not directly addressing the current VPN issues.

Answer

Use AWS Direct Connect instead of the VPN for all traffic, as it provides lower latency and higher reliability

Answer

Enable AWS Global Accelerator for the VPN connection

Answer

Increase the VPN tunnel bandwidth by upgrading to a larger VPN gateway instance type

Question 10

A company is deploying SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a primary HANA database on an r5.8xlarge EC2 instance in a single Availability Zone. The business requires a recovery time objective (RTO) of 15 minutes and a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 minutes. The company wants to use native AWS services with minimal operational overhead. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP HANA with synchronous in-memory replication to a secondary EC2 instance in a different Availability Zone using SAP HANA System Replication, and use an overlay IP address for automatic client failover.. SAP HANA System Replication with synchronous mode across Availability Zones ensures that the secondary instance is always in sync, providing an RPO of zero or near-zero. The use of an overlay IP address enables automatic client failover, which is critical for meeting the 15-minute RTO with minimal manual effort. Other options either use unsupported load balancers, exceed the RTO, or lack application-aware replication.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) to replicate the HANA database to another Region and perform a failover when needed.

Answer

Create a backup of the HANA database to Amazon S3 every 5 minutes using AWS Backup, and restore the backup to a new EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone if a failure occurs.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA System Replication with a secondary instance in another Availability Zone and use an Application Load Balancer to route client connections to the primary.

Question 11

A company is migrating its SAP NetWeaver application servers to AWS. The application servers currently run on physical servers with 16 vCPUs and 128 GiB of RAM. The company wants to use EC2 instances and needs to ensure that the SAP application servers have sufficient network bandwidth for communication with the HANA database. Which EC2 instance family should be used?

Accepted Answer

R5 memory-optimized instances. AWS recommends memory-optimized instances like R5 for SAP NetWeaver application servers because they provide the necessary memory-to-vCPU ratio and network bandwidth. The workload described matches an r5.4xlarge instance, which has 16 vCPUs and 128 GiB RAM. Other instance families like M5, C5, or I3 are not specifically optimized for SAP application servers and may not meet the memory or network requirements as effectively.

Answer

C5 compute-optimized instances

Answer

I3 storage-optimized instances

Answer

M5 general-purpose instances

Question 12

A company runs an SAP NetWeaver ABAP system on AWS with a primary application server (PAS) and an additional application server (AAS) in the same Availability Zone. The company wants to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy with an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 2 hours. The DR site must be in a different AWS Region. Which solution meets these requirements most cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Implement a pilot light strategy: replicate the SAP database using SAP HANA system replication to the DR Region, and keep the application servers as AMIs that can be launched on demand.. The most cost-effective solution for the given RPO and RTO is a pilot light strategy using SAP HANA system replication for the database and AMIs for application servers. This provides near-real-time replication for the database and allows rapid recovery of application servers, balancing cost and recovery objectives.

Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) to replicate the EC2 instances to the DR Region, and automate recovery with AWS Step Functions.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take hourly snapshots of the EBS volumes and copy them to the DR Region. In a disaster, restore the volumes and launch new EC2 instances from AMIs.

Answer

Use a warm standby strategy: run a scaled-down version of the entire SAP system in the DR Region, with continuous data replication using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS).

Question 13

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on an r6i.16xlarge EC2 instance with a single 2-TB gp3 EBS volume for the /hana/data and /hana/log directories. During month-end closing, the SAP HANA administrator observes that the log write latency measured by HANA exceeds 4 ms, while the data volume latency stays below 1 ms. The instance type supports up to 40 Gbps of EBS bandwidth. Which change should the administrator make to meet SAP's requirement for the log volume?

Accepted Answer

Move the /hana/log directory to a separate io2 Block Express volume provisioned with the required IOPS.. SAP HANA has strict latency requirements for the log volume: write latency must be consistently below 1 ms. gp3 volumes, even with provisioned IOPS, do not offer the guaranteed sub-millisecond latency that HANA needs for logging. io2 Block Express volumes provide the high IOPS and consistent low latency required. Separating the log onto its own io2 Block Express volume is the appropriate design change when log latency exceeds the SAP threshold during peak periods such as month-end closing.

Answer

Increase the size of the gp3 volume to 4 TB to raise the baseline IOPS above the observed demand.

Answer

Change the volume type to st1 Throughput Optimized HDD to benefit from higher sequential throughput.

Answer

Enable EBS Multi-Attach on the existing gp3 volume to double the available IOPS.

Question 14

A company runs SAP BW/4HANA on AWS with a single HANA database on an r5.12xlarge instance. The database is 2 TB in size and resides on a single gp3 EBS volume with 10,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput. During data load processes, the SAP administrator observes that the HANA database is experiencing high I/O wait times, and the EBS volume's burst balance is being depleted. Which action should the administrator take to improve I/O performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the EBS volume type to io2 Block Express with provisioned IOPS and throughput that meet the workload requirements.. io2 Block Express volumes offer higher and more consistent IOPS and throughput without burst credits, making them ideal for I/O-intensive SAP HANA workloads. Provisioning the appropriate IOPS and throughput will resolve the burst balance depletion and improve performance during data loads. Other options either do not address the performance issue or introduce unnecessary complexity.

Answer

Enable EBS fast snapshot restore on the volume to improve read performance.

Answer

Add multiple gp3 volumes and create a RAID 0 array to increase IOPS and throughput.

Answer

Increase the size of the gp3 volume to 4 TB to increase baseline IOPS and throughput.

Question 15

A company is designing a new SAP NetWeaver ABAP-based system on AWS. The system must be highly available across two Availability Zones. The SAP application servers will run on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The company wants to ensure that the SAP GUI clients can reconnect to the same application server after a failover, and that the system can survive the failure of a single Availability Zone. Which TWO design elements are required to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP application servers in an Auto Scaling group that spans multiple Availability Zones.. To maintain SAP GUI session affinity and survive an AZ failure, the application servers must be behind a load balancer that supports sticky sessions, and they must be deployed across multiple AZs with the ability to recover from failures. An Application Load Balancer with application-controlled cookies provides the necessary session persistence, while an Auto Scaling group spanning AZs ensures availability and automatic replacement of failed instances.

Answer

Place the SAP HANA database on a single EC2 instance in one Availability Zone.

Answer

Use a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with a static IP address for SAP GUI connections.

Answer

Configure Amazon Route 53 with a latency-based routing policy for the SAP GUI clients.