PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 23 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is designing storage for an SAP HANA database on AWS. The database requires high throughput and low latency for data files. Which storage solution should be used for SAP HANA data volumes?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EBS gp3 or io2 volumes. Amazon EBS gp3 or io2 volumes are the correct choice for SAP HANA data volumes because they provide the high throughput, low latency, and consistent IOPS required for SAP HANA's in-memory database operations. gp3 offers baseline performance with the ability to scale independently, while io2 provides provisioned IOPS for critical workloads, both meeting SAP's certification requirements for HANA on AWS.

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Amazon S3

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EC2 Instance Store

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Amazon EFS

Question 2

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing high latency for disk I/O. The system uses Amazon EBS gp2 volumes. The operations team notices that the volume queue depth is consistently high. Which change is most likely to reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Migrate from gp2 to gp3 volumes and increase IOPS.. Gp3 volumes offer a baseline performance that is higher than gp2 for a given size, and they allow you to independently increase IOPS without needing to provision more storage. Since the volume queue depth is consistently high, the bottleneck is likely due to insufficient IOPS, and migrating to gp3 with increased IOPS directly addresses this by providing more I/O capacity, reducing latency.

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Increase the EC2 instance size to get more EBS bandwidth.

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Configure RAID 0 across multiple EBS volumes.

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Increase the block size of the file system.

Question 3

A company is deploying SAP Business Suite on AWS and wants to minimize network latency between the SAP application servers and the database server. Which placement strategy is best?

Accepted Answer

Place the servers in the same placement group within a single Availability Zone.. Placement groups in AWS allow you to influence the placement of a group of interdependent instances to meet the needs of your workload. For SAP Business Suite, which is sensitive to network latency between application and database servers, using a cluster placement group within a single Availability Zone ensures the lowest possible latency and maximum throughput, as instances are placed in close proximity to each other, often within the same rack, enabling high-bandwidth, low-latency networking.

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Place the servers in different VPCs connected via VPC Peering.

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Place the application and database servers in different Availability Zones within the same region.

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Place the servers in different AWS Regions.

Question 4

An SAP HANA database on AWS is using EBS gp3 volumes with 3000 IOPS. The database team observes that the write latency is high during peak hours. The EBS volume is not exceeding its bandwidth limit. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The EBS volume's IOPS limit is being reached, causing queuing.. The observed high write latency during peak hours, despite the EBS volume not exceeding its bandwidth limit, indicates that the volume's IOPS limit of 3000 is being reached. When the IOPS limit is hit, the EBS volume queues I/O requests, which increases latency. This is a classic symptom of IOPS saturation rather than bandwidth saturation.

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The EBS volume is not attached as a dedicated EBS bandwidth volume.

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The EC2 instance's EBS bandwidth is saturated.

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The EC2 instance does not have EBS optimization enabled.

Question 5

A company wants to automate the installation of SAP software on AWS. Which AWS service is most appropriate for orchestrating the deployment of SAP systems?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the most appropriate service for orchestrating the deployment of SAP systems because it allows you to define the entire infrastructure as code using templates, enabling automated, repeatable, and consistent provisioning of SAP landscapes. It supports custom resources and nested stacks, which are essential for managing the complex dependencies and multi-tier architecture typical of SAP deployments on AWS.

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AWS OpsWorks

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AWS CodeDeploy

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AWS Lambda

Question 6

Which TWO of the following are best practices for running SAP HANA on AWS? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Use EBS Snapshots for backup of HANA data volumes.. EBS Snapshots provide a consistent, crash-consistent backup mechanism for HANA data volumes when used with application-consistent procedures (e.g., pre-freeze/post-thaw scripts via AWS Backup or custom automation). Snapshots are block-level, incremental, and can be automated for point-in-time recovery, aligning with SAP HANA backup best practices on AWS.

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Use Amazon EFS as the storage layer for HANA data files.

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Use T3 instances for production to save costs.

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Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for HANA database replication.

Question 7

Which THREE of the following are valid strategies for disaster recovery (DR) of SAP workloads on AWS? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Pilot light environment with replicated data volumes that can be attached to EC2 instances in DR.. Option B is correct because a pilot light keeps only the minimal core (for example, replicated Amazon EBS snapshots or volumes) running in the DR Region, and during a disaster those data volumes are attached to EC2 instances that are then started, which is a recognized cost-effective SAP DR strategy on AWS. Option C is correct because regularly backing up SAP systems (for example, SAP HANA database backups or AWS Backint Agent backups) to Amazon S3 and restoring them in another AWS Region provides a valid, region-independent recovery strategy using S3 Cross-Region Replication or cross-region restore. Option D is correct because SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) can be configured across AWS Regions, replicating the HANA database in near-real time to a secondary site so the DR Region can take over, which is a supported SAP-on-AWS DR approach. Option A is not a standard valid DR strategy because a fully scaled-down environment that must be manually scaled up does not maintain the replicated data or continuous synchronization needed for SAP recovery, and it conflates warm standby with a simple resize operation. Option E is not valid for SAP workloads on AWS in this context because true multi-site active-active with real-time replication and automatic failover is not a generally supported or practical SAP DR pattern on AWS, especially for the HANA database, which relies on primary/secondary replication rather than symmetric active-active writes.

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Warm standby with a fully scaled-down environment that is manually scaled up during DR.

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Multi-site active-active with real-time replication and automatic failover.

Question 8

An SAP administrator needs to back up an SAP HANA database running on an Amazon EC2 instance. The requirement is to perform daily backups to Amazon S3 with minimal cost and impact on database performance. Which backup strategy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use SAP HANA Backint integration to back up to S3. SAP HANA Backint integration allows direct, streaming backups from the HANA database to Amazon S3, which minimizes performance impact by offloading backup processing to the Backint agent and avoids intermediate storage. This approach is cost-effective as it uses S3's low-cost storage and eliminates the need for additional infrastructure, meeting the requirement for daily backups with minimal cost and database performance impact.

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Use AWS Backup with the SAP HANA plugin

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Create EBS snapshots of the database volumes

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Configure S3 Lifecycle policies to move logs

Question 9

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The primary region is us-east-1 and the DR region is us-west-2. The RPO is 15 minutes and RTO is 1 hour. Which approach should be used to replicate SAP HANA data?

Accepted Answer

Configure HANA System Replication across regions. HANA System Replication (HSR) is the only option that meets the 15-minute RPO and 1-hour RTO for SAP HANA data replication across regions. HSR uses log-based asynchronous replication to continuously ship redo logs to the DR region, enabling near-real-time data synchronization with minimal data loss. This is the native SAP-recommended method for cross-region DR of SAP HANA databases.

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Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication

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Use Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication for backup files

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Use AWS Backup cross-region copy of EBS snapshots

Question 10

A company running SAP on AWS wants to automate the start and stop of non-production instances to save costs. Which AWS service is best suited for scheduling instance state changes?

Accepted Answer

AWS Instance Scheduler. AWS Instance Scheduler is a purpose-built solution that uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a scheduler that automatically starts and stops EC2 instances based on defined schedules. It is the recommended approach for SAP non-production instances because it natively supports tagging, time zones, and periodic schedules without requiring custom code, making it the most cost-effective and maintainable option for this use case.

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Amazon CloudWatch Events (EventBridge)

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AWS Auto Scaling

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AWS Lambda with custom code

Question 11

Which THREE factors must be considered when choosing an EC2 instance type for SAP HANA production workloads?

Accepted Answer

EBS-optimized support for consistent I/O. Option C (EBS-optimized support for consistent I/O) is correct because SAP HANA production workloads demand predictable, high-throughput storage performance, and EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated bandwidth to Amazon EBS, avoiding contention with network traffic. Option D (SAP certification of the instance type) is correct because SAP HANA production deployments must run on instance types that are officially certified by SAP, ensuring the hardware meets SAP's performance and reliability requirements. Option E (Memory (RAM) size required by SAP HANA) is correct because SAP HANA is an in-memory database, so the instance must have enough RAM to hold the entire working dataset in memory, making memory capacity a primary sizing factor. Option A (Burstable CPU performance with T3 instances) is not appropriate because T3 instances use a burstable CPU credit model that cannot guarantee sustained high CPU performance needed for production SAP HANA. Option B (GPU compute capability) is not a required factor because SAP HANA production workloads are CPU- and memory-intensive rather than GPU-accelerated.

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Burstable CPU performance (T3 instances)

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GPU compute capability

Question 12

A company is deploying SAP NetWeaver on AWS and needs to ensure that the SAP application servers can automatically scale based on CPU utilization. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Auto Scaling groups with CloudWatch alarms. AWS Auto Scaling groups with CloudWatch alarms allow SAP application servers to automatically scale in or out based on CPU utilization thresholds. This is the correct approach because Auto Scaling groups can dynamically adjust the number of EC2 instances in response to CloudWatch metric alarms, which is essential for handling variable SAP workload demands without manual intervention.

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Amazon CloudWatch to monitor CPU and send alerts

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AWS Lambda to start and stop instances based on a schedule

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Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) with health checks

Question 13

An SAP system administrator needs to ensure that all SAP application logs are centrally collected and monitored for errors. Which AWS service should they use to aggregate logs from multiple EC2 instances?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Amazon CloudWatch Logs is the correct service because it provides a centralized, agent-based log aggregation solution. The CloudWatch Logs agent (or unified CloudWatch agent) can be installed on each EC2 instance to automatically collect, encrypt, and stream SAP application logs to a central CloudWatch Logs group. This allows the administrator to monitor logs in real time, set metric filters for error patterns, and trigger alarms without needing to build custom infrastructure.

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Amazon S3 with server access logs

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Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

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AWS Lambda to process logs from each instance

Question 14

An SAP administrator is deploying an SAP ASCS instance using CloudFormation. The deployment fails because the instance cannot be reached from other SAP components. Based on the exhibit, what is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The security group does not allow inbound traffic on the required SAP ports.. The SAP ASCS instance must be reachable by other SAP components (e.g., PAS, AAS) on specific ports for services like the SAP Message Server (port 36xx/TCP) and SAP Enqueue Server (port 32xx/TCP). The exhibit shows the security group lacks inbound rules for these ports, so traffic from other components is blocked, causing the deployment to fail. Without proper inbound access, the ASCS instance cannot participate in the SAP system's communication, leading to the unreachability error.

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The instance type m5.large is not certified for SAP ASCS.

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The instance lacks an IAM role to join the SAP domain.

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The root volume is too small and uses gp2, which is not supported for SAP.

Question 15

A company is migrating SAP ECC to AWS and needs to ensure low-latency connectivity between the SAP application and database servers. Which AWS service is most appropriate to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Placement groups for the application and database instances.. Placement groups, specifically cluster placement groups, provide low-latency, high-throughput network connectivity by placing instances in a single Availability Zone within a low-latency, 10 Gbps network. This is ideal for SAP ECC where the application and database servers require consistent, sub-millisecond latency for optimal performance.

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VPC peering between the application and database subnets.

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AWS Direct Connect to connect the application and database servers.

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AWS Transit Gateway to connect the application and database subnets.