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

Question 1

An SAP administrator wants to automate the creation of a DR environment for SAP HANA on AWS. The DR site should be in a different region and must be started only during a disaster. Which AWS service should be used to orchestrate the DR process?

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

Accepted Answer

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) to replicate and orchestrate failover.. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) is the correct service because it provides continuous block-level replication for SAP HANA servers and includes built-in orchestration for failover and failback. This allows the DR environment to remain stopped until a disaster occurs, minimizing costs while ensuring rapid recovery.

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AWS Systems Manager Automation to run DR scripts.

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AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy the environment in the DR region.

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Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication to replicate SAP application data.

Question 2

Which TWO are best practices for designing high availability for SAP NetWeaver on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP ASCS and PAS instances in separate Availability Zones.. Deploying SAP ASCS (ABAP SAP Central Services) and PAS (Primary Application Server) instances in separate Availability Zones ensures that if one AZ fails, the other can continue processing, providing high availability. This aligns with AWS best practices for SAP NetWeaver, which recommend distributing critical SAP components across AZs to achieve a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of near-zero using SAP enqueue replication and failover mechanisms.

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Use T2 or T3 burstable instances for cost savings.

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Use EBS Multi-Attach volumes for the SAP application data.

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Configure multiple Application Load Balancers in a failover configuration.

Question 3

Which THREE are valid strategies for backing up an SAP HANA database on AWS? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon EBS snapshots of the HANA data volumes.. Amazon EBS snapshots provide crash-consistent, point-in-time backups of the HANA data volumes. When used with SAP HANA's snapshot mode (e.g., via hdbsql or Python scripts), they ensure transactional consistency by quiescing the database before the snapshot. This is a valid and commonly used backup strategy for SAP HANA on AWS.

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Set up an Amazon RDS for SAP HANA read replica.

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Configure a lifecycle policy to move backups to Amazon S3 Glacier immediately.

Question 4

Which TWO are required considerations when sizing an SAP HANA instance on AWS for a production environment? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Ensure the instance has enough memory to hold the HANA data in memory (RAM:data ratio).. SAP HANA is an in-memory database that requires all active data to reside in RAM. The RAM:data ratio must be carefully sized to ensure the instance has enough memory to hold the HANA data and log volumes in memory, typically with a 1:4 or 1:8 ratio depending on compression and workload. AWS provides specific instance types (e.g., x1e, u-6tb1) certified for SAP HANA that meet these memory requirements.

Answer

Provision instance store volumes for HANA data and log areas.

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Purchase Reserved Instances for the HANA server to reduce costs.

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Select an RDS instance type that supports SAP HANA.

Question 5

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a single-instance deployment. The database is hosted on an r5.8xlarge instance with 5000 provisioned IOPS EBS volumes. Recently, the system experienced a performance degradation during peak hours. CloudWatch metrics show that the EBS volume read latency is consistently above 10 ms, and the queue length is frequently peaking at 20. The instance is in the same Availability Zone as the EBS volumes. What should the administrator do to resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the EBS volumes to 10000.. The CloudWatch metrics show high read latency (>10 ms) and a queue length peaking at 20, which indicates that the EBS volume is throttling due to insufficient IOPS for the workload. Increasing provisioned IOPS from 5000 to 10000 directly addresses the bottleneck by allowing more I/O operations per second, reducing queue depth and latency. Since the instance and volumes are in the same Availability Zone, network latency is not a factor, and instance store volumes are ephemeral and unsuitable for persistent SAP HANA data.

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Move the instance to a different Availability Zone to reduce network latency.

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Move the database to an instance with instance store volumes for better performance.

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Migrate the EBS volumes to gp3 volume type with baseline performance.

Question 6

An organization has a production SAP ERP system on AWS with a multi-node SAP HANA scale-out configuration. The system uses a cluster placement group for low latency. During a maintenance window, the administrator needs to stop and start all instances. After restart, the HANA nodes cannot communicate with each other. The cluster placement group is still intact, but the private IP addresses have changed. The HANA topology relies on hostnames resolved via /etc/hosts. What is the MOST likely cause and solution?

Accepted Answer

The private IP addresses changed, but /etc/hosts still has the old IPs. Update /etc/hosts with the new IPs or use Elastic IPs.. When EC2 instances in a cluster placement group are stopped and started, the private IP addresses can change unless they are configured with a primary Elastic Network Interface (ENI) or Elastic IP. Since the SAP HANA scale-out topology relies on hostnames resolved via /etc/hosts, the old IPs in that file become stale after the restart, breaking inter-node communication. Updating /etc/hosts with the new private IPs or assigning Elastic IPs to preserve the addresses resolves the issue.

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The EBS volumes were detached during stop. Reattach the volumes.

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The security group rules were reset. Reapply the security group rules.

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The cluster placement group was removed during stop/start. Recreate the placement group.

Question 7

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS with a multi-AZ deployment using HANA System Replication (HSR). The primary site is in us-east-1a and the secondary in us-east-1b. Each site has an ASCS and PAS. The HANA database uses a virtual IP address managed by a Route 53 health check with a failover routing policy. During a recent AZ failure in us-east-1a, the automatic failover to the secondary site took over 15 minutes. The recovery time objective (RTO) is 5 minutes. Analysis shows that the Route 53 health check failed but the failover did not trigger quickly because the DNS TTL was set to 300 seconds. What changes should be made to meet the RTO?

Accepted Answer

Reduce the DNS TTL to 60 seconds and use a weighted routing policy with health checks.. Reducing the DNS TTL to 60 seconds ensures that DNS resolvers cache the failover record for a shorter duration, allowing the Route 53 failover routing policy to propagate the new IP address more quickly after a health check failure. Combined with a weighted routing policy and health checks, this enables failover within the 5-minute RTO by minimizing DNS propagation delay, which was the bottleneck at 300 seconds.

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Increase the DNS TTL to 600 seconds to ensure stability.

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Replace Route 53 with an Application Load Balancer for the virtual IP.

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Remove the health check and use a simple routing policy with a low TTL.

Question 8

A company is deploying a new SAP BusinessObjects system on AWS. The system will consist of multiple servers: a CMS database server, an audit database server, and several processing servers. The administrator needs to ensure that all servers can communicate with each other and with corporate on-premises systems via a VPN connection. The AWS environment is in a single VPC with public and private subnets. Which network architecture should be used to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Place servers in private subnets and use a NAT Gateway for outbound internet and a VPN gateway for on-premises connectivity.. Placing the SAP BusinessObjects servers in private subnets ensures they are not directly exposed to the internet, which is a security best practice. A NAT Gateway provides outbound internet access for tasks like software updates, while a VPN Gateway (or Virtual Private Gateway) establishes encrypted connectivity to the corporate on-premises systems, meeting the requirement for inter-server and hybrid communication.

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Place all servers in public subnets with Elastic IPs and use security groups to restrict access.

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Use a single public subnet for all servers and rely on network ACLs for isolation.

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Place servers in private subnets and use a bastion host for all inter-server communication.

Question 9

An SAP system on AWS uses a large memory instance (x1e.32xlarge) for HANA. The administrator notices that the system is experiencing high swap usage. The HANA memory usage is at 90% of physical RAM. The instance has 4 TB of RAM, and the HANA data size is 3.8 TB. The administrator wants to avoid swap usage to maintain performance. Which solution should be implemented?

Accepted Answer

Migrate to a larger instance type, such as u-6tb1, with more RAM.. The x1e.32xlarge instance has 4 TB of RAM, and with HANA using 90% (3.6 TB) and the data size at 3.8 TB, the memory is insufficient to hold the entire dataset, causing swap usage. Migrating to a u-6tb1 instance with 6 TB of RAM provides enough physical memory to accommodate the full HANA data footprint, eliminating the need for swap and maintaining performance.

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Enable swap space on the instance store volumes to offload memory pressure.

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Optimize HANA column store compression to reduce memory footprint.

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Increase the provisioned IOPS on the EBS volumes to reduce I/O latency.

Question 10

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a multi-tier landscape (DEV, QAS, PRD). The PRD system uses a clustered setup with two application servers behind an Application Load Balancer. The database is a single-node HANA on an r5.24xlarge instance. The administrator receives an alert that the PRD application is slow. CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization on the two application servers (average 95%) and high DB connection count. The ALB shows increased request latency. The database CPU is at 60%. The administrator suspects a SQL query performance issue. What should be the first step to identify the root cause?

Accepted Answer

Enable detailed SQL trace in HANA to identify high-resource queries.. The symptoms (high CPU on app servers, high DB connections, increased ALB latency, DB CPU at 60%) strongly suggest a SQL query performance bottleneck, not a capacity issue. Enabling detailed SQL trace in HANA (option B) is the most direct first step to identify the specific high-resource queries causing the slowdown, as it captures execution plans, wait times, and resource consumption per query. This aligns with SAP's recommended troubleshooting methodology for HANA performance issues.

Answer

Configure CloudWatch Logs to capture HANA trace logs and analyze them.

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Add two more application servers to distribute the load.

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Increase the size of the HANA database instance to reduce CPU pressure.

Question 11

An organization is migrating its SAP ECC system to AWS. The system currently uses a physical IBM Db2 database. The company wants to minimize licensing costs and management overhead after migration. The SAP system will be deployed on Amazon EC2. Which database option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Migrate to SAP ASE (Sybase) on EC2.. SAP ASE (Sybase) is the recommended database for SAP workloads on AWS when minimizing licensing costs and management overhead is a priority. Unlike IBM Db2 or Oracle, SAP ASE has lower licensing fees and is fully supported by SAP for production use on EC2. It also avoids the complexity and higher cost of migrating to SAP HANA, which is unnecessary for an existing SAP ECC system that does not require in-memory capabilities.

Answer

Continue using IBM Db2 on EC2 to avoid migration complexity.

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Migrate to SAP HANA on EC2 to gain in-memory benefits.

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Migrate to Oracle Database on Amazon RDS.

Question 12

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system requires high availability with automatic failover and minimal data loss. Which TWO strategies should the company implement to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the SAP ASCS instance in a Multi-AZ configuration using AWS services.. Deploying the SAP ASCS instance in a Multi-AZ configuration using AWS services (such as an Amazon RDS Multi-AZ DB instance for the SAP system database or a Multi-AZ deployment for the SAP Central Services) provides automatic failover to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone, ensuring high availability with minimal data loss. This setup leverages synchronous replication to keep the standby synchronized, so failover occurs without significant data loss.

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Implement daily snapshots of all SAP EBS volumes using AWS Backup.

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Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to replicate the entire SAP environment to a different Region.

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Use Amazon S3 cross-region replication for all SAP application files.

Question 13

A company runs SAP on AWS and needs to monitor the performance of its SAP HANA database. The operations team wants to receive alerts when the CPU utilization exceeds 90% for more than 5 minutes. Which TWO steps should be taken to set up this monitoring and alerting?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Amazon SNS topic to send email or SMS notifications when the alarm state is reached.. Amazon SNS is the standard AWS service for distributing notifications from CloudWatch alarms. By configuring an SNS topic to send email or SMS, the operations team receives alerts when the CPU utilization alarm triggers. Option B is correct because a CloudWatch alarm can be created to monitor the EC2 instance's CPU utilization metric directly; no metric filter is needed. Option C is not required: CPU utilization is a pre-existing EC2 metric, not a log-based metric, so a metric filter is unnecessary. Option D is wrong because SAP application logs are not needed for CPU utilization monitoring. Option E is wrong because SAP Host Agent is not required for basic CloudWatch monitoring; CloudWatch and SNS provide a simpler native solution.

Answer

Create a CloudWatch metric filter on the HANA host's CPU utilization.

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Enable CloudWatch Logs for the SAP application logs to detect performance issues.

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Install the SAP Host Agent on the HANA instance and configure it to send metrics to SAP Solution Manager.

Question 14

An organization runs SAP BusinessObjects on AWS and wants to improve the performance of report generation. The current environment uses EBS gp2 volumes. Which TWO changes could potentially reduce report generation time?

Accepted Answer

Switch to EBS io2 Block Express volumes with higher IOPS.. Switching to EBS io2 Block Express volumes provides higher IOPS and lower latency compared to gp2 volumes, which directly improves the I/O performance for SAP BusinessObjects report generation that often involves heavy database and file system reads. Option E is correct because adding more SAP BusinessObjects application servers distributes the report generation workload across multiple nodes, reducing the processing bottleneck on a single server and decreasing overall generation time.

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Increase the size of the EBS root volume.

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Enable EBS optimization on the instance.

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Configure automated snapshots of the EBS volumes.

Question 15

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue on an SAP NetWeaver system running on AWS. The system uses an Oracle database. The CPU utilization of the database server is consistently below 30%, but application response times are slow. Which THREE checks should the administrator perform to identify the bottleneck?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon CloudWatch metrics to check network throughput and latency between the application and database servers.. High network latency or insufficient throughput between the application and database servers can cause slow response times even when CPU utilization is low. Amazon CloudWatch metrics such as NetworkIn, NetworkOut, and NetworkPacketsIn/Out can reveal congestion or bandwidth saturation, which is a common bottleneck in SAP NetWeaver deployments on AWS.

Answer

Increase the number of CPU cores on the database server.

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Enable Amazon EBS Elastic Volumes to increase volume size dynamically.