PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is running SAP HANA in a production environment on AWS. The database administrator wants to implement automated backups using AWS Backup. Which of the following are supported by AWS Backup for SAP HANA? (Select THREE.)

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

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA database backups. AWS Backup supports SAP HANA database backups through its Backint integration, allowing application-consistent backups. Additionally, AWS Backup supports Amazon EBS volumes (for volume-level snapshots) and Amazon EC2 instances (for instance-level snapshots), which are commonly used for SAP HANA workloads on AWS. Amazon RDS does not support SAP HANA, and Amazon S3 is not directly a backup resource type for SAP HANA via AWS Backup.

Answer

Amazon RDS databases

Answer

Amazon S3 buckets

Question 2

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and wants to encrypt the database at rest. Which THREE options are available to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS KMS with a custom key store to manage encryption keys.. Three options are available for encrypting SAP HANA at rest on AWS. Option B: AWS KMS with a custom key store allows you to use a customer-managed key store backed by AWS CloudHSM, providing control over encryption keys for data at rest, and integrates with EBS encryption. Option C: SAP HANA native encryption encrypts the database directly, which is independent of the underlying storage. Option E: Amazon EBS encryption encrypts all EBS volumes attached to the HANA instance, providing encryption at the block storage level. Option A is incorrect because SAP HANA runs on EC2, not RDS. Option D is incorrect because SAP HANA database files are stored on EBS volumes, not S3.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS encryption for the SAP HANA database.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 server-side encryption for database files.

Question 3

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for its SAP environment on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1, and the DR site must be in us-west-2. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 4 hours. Which TWO AWS services should be used to meet these objectives?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication configured with asynchronous replication to a HANA instance in us-west-2.. SAP HANA System Replication with asynchronous mode can achieve an RPO of 15 minutes or less by continuously replicating log buffers from the primary HANA database in us-east-1 to a secondary HANA instance in us-west-2. This is the native SAP replication mechanism and directly meets the database-level RPO requirement. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) continuously replicates entire SAP servers (including OS, applications, and data) to us-west-2, enabling full server failover within the RTO. Together, HANA replication handles database consistency while DRS covers the application and infrastructure layer, meeting both the RPO and RTO objectives.

Answer

Amazon Route 53 health checks to fail over DNS to the DR site.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups to launch instances in us-west-2 on failover.

Answer

AWS Backup to copy EBS snapshots to us-west-2 every 15 minutes.

Question 4

An SAP NetWeaver system on AWS is configured with a shared file system between the application servers. Which AWS storage service should be used for this shared file system?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, NFS-based shared file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple EC2 instances, making it ideal for SAP NetWeaver application servers that require a common file system for shared data such as transport directories, logs, and profile files. EFS supports the NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.0 protocols, ensuring POSIX-compliant file locking and consistency across the cluster.

Answer

AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EBS with multi-attach

Question 5

A company is migrating an SAP ECC system to AWS and needs to ensure low-latency connectivity between the application server and the database server. Both servers will be in the same VPC but different subnets. Which configuration best minimizes latency?

Accepted Answer

Place the servers in the same placement group and the same Availability Zone. Placing both the SAP application server and database server in the same placement group and the same Availability Zone ensures they are physically close together within a single data center, minimizing network latency. This configuration leverages the low-latency, high-bandwidth network connectivity provided by a cluster placement group, which is critical for SAP ECC workloads that require rapid database transactions.

Answer

Place the servers in different placement groups but the same Availability Zone

Answer

Use a cluster placement group spanning two Availability Zones

Answer

Place the servers in different Availability Zones but within the same region

Question 6

An SAP administrator is designing a high-availability (HA) setup for SAP HANA in a multi-AZ deployment on AWS. Which combination of AWS services and configurations is required for a fully automated HA solution?

Accepted Answer

NAT Gateway, EBS snapshots, and AWS Lambda. A fully automated high-availability solution for SAP HANA on AWS leverages AWS Lambda to orchestrate failover logic, monitor HANA system replication, and trigger automated recovery steps. NAT Gateway provides the necessary outbound connectivity for the HANA instances to access external resources, such as the replication partner in another AZ or AWS services for automation. EBS snapshots ensure crash-consistent backups of HANA data volumes, which can be used for rapid restoration in the event of a failure, enabling automated recovery without manual intervention.

Answer

Classic Load Balancer, AWS CloudTrail, and Amazon Inspector

Answer

Amazon Route 53, Application Load Balancer, and AWS CloudFormation

Answer

EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon RDS, and AWS Backup

Question 7

An SAP HANA system on AWS is experiencing performance degradation. The administrator suspects that the EBS volumes are not providing consistent IOPS. Which AWS tool can be used to monitor the performance of EBS volumes at the volume level?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch provides detailed metrics for EBS volumes, including `VolumeReadOps`, `VolumeWriteOps`, `VolumeQueueLength`, and `VolumeIdleTime`, which allow administrators to monitor IOPS performance at the individual volume level. By setting CloudWatch alarms on these metrics, you can detect when an EBS volume is not delivering the provisioned IOPS, which is critical for SAP HANA workloads that require consistent, high-throughput storage.

Answer

AWS X-Ray

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 8

An SAP HANA database on AWS is using EBS io2 volumes. The administrator wants to increase the IOPS limit to meet peak workload demands without changing the volume size. What is the maximum IOPS that can be provisioned for an io2 volume per GB?

Accepted Answer

1,000 IOPS per GB. Amazon EBS io2 volumes support a maximum of 1,000 IOPS per GB, up to a volume-level limit of 256,000 IOPS. This allows the administrator to increase IOPS for peak workloads without resizing the volume, as long as the per-GB ratio is not exceeded.

Answer

2,000 IOPS per GB

Answer

500 IOPS per GB

Answer

100 IOPS per GB

Question 9

An SAP administrator runs the AWS CLI command shown. The output shows /dev/sdf. Which SAP HANA volume is typically mounted at this device?

Accepted Answer

/hana/data. In SAP HANA on AWS, the /dev/sdf device is typically mapped to the /hana/data volume. This is because AWS recommends using separate EBS volumes for /hana/data, /hana/log, and /hana/shared, and the default naming convention assigns /dev/sdf to the data volume in many SAP HANA deployment templates and AWS Quick Starts.

Answer

/hana/log

Answer

/usr/sap

Answer

/hana/shared

Question 10

A company is planning to run SAP HANA on AWS. What is the recommended practice for sizing the EC2 instance for SAP HANA?

Accepted Answer

Select an instance type from the SAP HANA certified list on AWS. AWS requires SAP HANA to run only on EC2 instance types that have been certified by SAP and listed in the SAP HANA Hardware Directory. This certification ensures the instance meets SAP's strict memory, CPU, and I/O requirements for production workloads. Selecting a non-certified instance can lead to unsupported configurations, performance issues, and loss of SAP support.

Answer

Choose an instance with the highest network bandwidth

Answer

Choose an instance with the highest vCPU count

Answer

Choose an instance with the most memory available

Question 11

Which TWO actions are recommended for securing an SAP system on AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Enable encryption at rest for EBS volumes and RDS instances. Using security groups to control traffic and enabling encryption at rest are key security measures. Option B is wrong because disabling CloudTrail reduces visibility. Option D is wrong because public subnets are not recommended. Option E is wrong because default VPC security groups are too permissive.

Answer

Disable AWS CloudTrail to reduce logging overhead

Answer

Place all SAP servers in a public subnet for easier management

Answer

Use the default VPC security group for all SAP instances

Question 12

An SAP system administrator is designing the storage layout for an SAP HANA database on AWS. The HANA data volume requires 5000 IOPS and 250 MB/s throughput. Which EBS volume type and configuration should be used to meet these requirements cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Use a single io1 volume with 5000 provisioned IOPS and 250 MB/s throughput. Io1 (provisioned IOPS) volumes can deliver up to 64,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s throughput per volume, and you can provision exactly 5,000 IOPS and achieve 250 MB/s throughput (since for io1, throughput scales with IOPS at 256 KB block size, 5,000 IOPS × 256 KB = 1,280 MB/s, but the volume size and instance bandwidth cap it; however, io1 is the only EBS type that guarantees both provisioned IOPS and throughput independently for SAP HANA, which requires consistent low-latency performance).

Answer

Use a single gp3 volume with 5000 IOPS and 250 MB/s throughput

Answer

Use a single sc1 volume with 5000 IOPS and 250 MB/s throughput

Answer

Use a single st1 volume with 5000 IOPS and 250 MB/s throughput

Question 13

A company is designing a new SAP S/4HANA workload on AWS. Which storage service should be used for the SAP HANA data volume to meet the required throughput and latency for production systems?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes are the correct choice for SAP HANA data volumes because they provide sub-millisecond latency and up to 256,000 IOPS per volume with 99.999% durability, meeting the strict throughput and latency requirements of SAP HANA production systems. SAP specifically certifies io2 Block Express for SAP HANA data volumes on AWS, ensuring consistent performance for mission-critical workloads.

Answer

Amazon S3

Answer

Amazon EFS

Answer

Amazon EBS gp3 volumes

Question 14

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to back up the SAP HANA database to Amazon S3 with the ability to perform point-in-time recovery. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use the SAP HANA BACKUP command with S3 as the backup destination via the hdbsql tool. SAP HANA natively supports backing up directly to Amazon S3 using the `BACKUP DATA` command with the `S3` destination parameter via `hdbsql`. This allows point-in-time recovery by leveraging HANA's own log backup mechanism, which writes transaction log backups to S3 continuously, enabling restore to any specific point in time without intermediate storage layers.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA backup to write to Amazon EFS, then use AWS DataSync to copy to S3

Answer

Use AWS Backup to schedule backups of the EC2 instances running SAP HANA

Answer

Attach Amazon EBS volumes and use EBS snapshots for point-in-time recovery

Question 15

An SAP administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue on an SAP HANA instance running on an EC2 instance. The instance type is r5.8xlarge with 256 GB of RAM. The administrator notices that the instance's CPU credit balance is depleting rapidly. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The instance has a high network throughput causing CPU overhead. The r5.8xlarge is a standard, non-burstable instance that does not have a CPU credit mechanism. Therefore, a rapidly depleting CPU credit balance cannot occur on an r5 instance. Among the given options, high network throughput causing CPU overhead (Option C) is the most plausible cause of increased CPU utilization, which the administrator might misinterpret as CPU credit depletion. However, if CPU credit balance is actually being observed, the instance cannot be an r5, suggesting the scenario is contradictory. Option C is the best fit as it addresses a performance issue that could lead to high CPU usage, though it does not directly explain credit depletion.

Answer

The instance is using EBS-optimized with insufficient bandwidth

Answer

The SAP application is using too much memory

Answer

The instance is a burstable performance instance (e.g., T3) not an r5