PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 26 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP customer wants to reduce the cost of running a non-production SAP system on AWS. The system is used only during business hours (8 AM to 6 PM) on weekdays. What is the most cost-effective solution?

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

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Instance Scheduler to stop instances outside business hours.. Using AWS Instance Scheduler allows you to automatically stop instances outside business hours, reducing costs significantly for systems used only during specific times. Option A is incorrect because Reserved Instances are best for steady-state usage and would still incur costs for hours when the system is not needed. Option B is incorrect because Compute Savings Plans also require consistent usage to be cost-effective and do not eliminate charges for idle hours. Option C is incorrect because running On-Demand instances without scheduling does not reduce costs, as you pay for every hour regardless of usage.

Answer

Purchase Reserved Instances for 1-year term.

Answer

Purchase Compute Savings Plans for 3-year term.

Answer

Run the instances as On-Demand without any schedule.

Question 2

An SAP system on AWS is experiencing performance degradation. The CloudWatch metrics show that the EBS volumes used for the HANA data files have an average queue length of 10 and average latency of 50 ms. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The EBS volume's provisioned IOPS are insufficient for the workload.. An average EBS queue length of 10 and average latency of 50 ms indicate that the volume is saturated with I/O requests. The queue length persistently exceeds the recommended threshold (typically <1 for optimal performance), and latency spikes above the 1–10 ms range for gp3 or io2 volumes. This directly points to insufficient provisioned IOPS for the SAP HANA workload, causing requests to queue up and wait for service.

Answer

EBS encryption is causing additional overhead.

Answer

EBS snapshots are being taken too frequently.

Answer

EBS optimization is not enabled on the instance.

Question 3

A company wants to implement a backup strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. The backup must be stored securely and be accessible for restore to a different AWS Region. Which combination of AWS services should be used?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup with cross-region backup copy. AWS Backup with cross-region backup copy is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, policy-driven backup service that natively supports SAP HANA on Amazon EC2, including automated cross-region copy for disaster recovery. This ensures backups are stored securely (encrypted at rest and in transit) and can be restored in a different AWS Region without manual intervention.

Answer

Take EBS snapshots and copy them to another region

Answer

Store HANA backups in Amazon S3 Standard-IA

Answer

Use Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Question 4

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to monitor SAP HANA performance on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA Studio. Option A (SAP HANA Studio) is correct because it is SAP's native administration and monitoring client that connects directly to the HANA database (via the indexserver SQL port 3<instance>15) and provides the Administration Console with performance views such as expensive statements, memory allocation, and thread statistics. Option B (Amazon CloudWatch with the CloudWatch agent collecting HANA metrics) is correct because the CloudWatch agent can run on the EC2 instance hosting HANA, execute the HANA SQL queries defined in its configuration, and publish those database metrics as custom CloudWatch metrics for dashboards and alarms. Option C (AWS Config) is not correct because it records and evaluates AWS resource configuration changes, not in-memory database performance. Option D (Amazon Inspector) is not correct because it performs automated vulnerability and network reachability assessments, not performance monitoring. Option E (AWS Trusted Advisor) is not correct because it provides best-practice checks on cost, security, fault tolerance, and service limits, not SAP HANA performance metrics.

Answer

AWS Config

Answer

Amazon Inspector

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 5

An SAP Basis team is designing a high-availability architecture for SAP NetWeaver on AWS. They plan to use a shared file system for the transport directory and SAP profiles across multiple availability zones. Which AWS storage service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, NFS-based shared file system that is accessible from multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones. For SAP NetWeaver, the transport directory and SAP profiles must be concurrently accessible from all application servers in a high-availability setup, and EFS supports the required POSIX permissions and locking semantics needed by SAP.

Answer

Amazon EBS with multi-attach

Answer

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Answer

Amazon S3

Question 6

During a SAP migration to AWS, the team needs to ensure that the SAP license is compliant. Which of the following is a requirement for running SAP production systems on AWS?

Accepted Answer

The EC2 instance must be SAP-certified and the number of SAPS must be licensed.. AWS requires that for running SAP production systems, the EC2 instance must be SAP-certified (listed in the SAP Certified and Supported Hardware Directory) and the customer must have licensed the appropriate number of SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) units for the instance type. This ensures the infrastructure meets SAP's performance and support requirements, and that the license covers the compute capacity used.

Answer

The company must use AWS Enterprise Support.

Answer

The company must notify SAP of the migration to AWS.

Answer

The company must use a specific AWS region.

Question 7

An SAP system administrator needs to monitor the memory usage of SAP HANA on AWS. Which CloudWatch metric or log should be used to track HANA memory consumption?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA CloudWatch integration via SQL queries. SAP HANA exposes memory consumption metrics via built-in SQL views (e.g., M_HOST_MEMORY, M_MEMORY), and the SAP HANA CloudWatch integration uses a dedicated AWS Lambda function to execute these SQL queries and push the results as custom CloudWatch metrics. This is the only option that directly captures HANA-specific memory usage, such as allocation limit, used memory, and heap memory, rather than generic OS-level metrics.

Answer

CloudWatch Logs from HANA trace files

Answer

EC2 instance-level memory metrics

Answer

AWS CloudWatch Agent for OS metrics

Question 8

A company is designing a multi-tier SAP architecture on AWS. They want to separate the SAP application tier and database tier into different subnets for security. Which AWS networking component should they use to connect the tiers?

Accepted Answer

VPC peering connection. The tiers are placed in different subnets within the same VPC. Subnets in the same VPC can communicate using the VPC's local route, so no additional networking component is required. None of the listed options is correct; VPC peering, Direct Connect, Site-to-Site VPN, and Transit Gateway are for connecting separate VPCs or on-premises networks.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

Answer

AWS Transit Gateway

Question 9

An SAP administrator is configuring the /hana/data volume for SAP HANA on an EC2 instance. The exhibit shows the /etc/fstab entry. What is the purpose of the 'noatime' mount option?

Accepted Answer

To disable updating the access time on files, improving performance.. The 'noatime' mount option disables the update of inode access timestamps (atime) on every file read. For SAP HANA, which performs high-frequency I/O operations on the /hana/data volume, this eliminates unnecessary metadata writes, reducing disk I/O overhead and improving overall filesystem performance.

Answer

To enable swap space on the volume.

Answer

To enable disk quotas.

Answer

To mount the volume as read-only.

Question 10

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS and needs to minimize network latency between the SAP application servers and the database. Which AWS service or feature should be used to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Place the application and database servers in the same placement group.. Placement groups in AWS, specifically cluster placement groups, provide low-latency network performance by ensuring that EC2 instances are placed in close physical proximity within a single Availability Zone. This minimizes network latency between SAP application servers and the database, meeting the requirement for high-throughput, low-latency communication critical for SAP ERP workloads.

Answer

Use AWS Global Accelerator for the application servers.

Answer

Set up VPC peering between the application and database VPCs.

Answer

Use an Elastic Load Balancer in front of the application servers.

Question 11

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for its SAP system on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1 and the DR site in us-west-2. The RTO is 4 hours and RPO is 1 hour. Which AWS service should be used for cross-region replication of the SAP HANA database backups stored in Amazon S3?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR).. Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is the correct choice because it automatically replicates objects (including SAP HANA database backups) from a source S3 bucket in us-east-1 to a destination bucket in us-west-2, meeting the 1-hour RPO by ensuring backups are available in the DR region within minutes of upload. CRR operates asynchronously at the object level, requires no additional infrastructure, and directly supports the stated requirement for cross-region replication of S3-stored backups without introducing extra latency or complexity.

Answer

AWS Backup with a cross-region backup plan.

Answer

Use AWS Storage Gateway to replicate backups.

Answer

Enable S3 Versioning on the source bucket.

Question 12

An SAP system on AWS needs to be highly available across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). The SAP Central Services (ASCS) and the database are both critical. Which architecture should be used?

Accepted Answer

Deploy ASCS with a cluster across two AZs, and use HANA System Replication across two AZs.. SAP ASCS requires a cluster (e.g., Pacemaker with SBD fencing) across two AZs to provide failover for the central services, while HANA System Replication (HSR) synchronously replicates the database to a secondary AZ for automatic failover. This dual-cluster architecture ensures both critical components remain highly available, meeting SAP's certified HA patterns on AWS.

Answer

Use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic across AZs.

Answer

Place all components in a single AZ to avoid cross-AZ latency.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for the database and a single ASCS instance.

Question 13

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the system can be restored to a specific point in time within the last 24 hours with minimal data loss. The database is 2 TB in size. Which backup strategy meets these requirements with the lowest cost?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Backup with a daily backup and a 24-hour retention policy, enabling point-in-time recovery.. AWS Backup for SAP HANA provides continuous backup with log backups every 5 minutes, enabling point-in-time recovery to any second within the retention period. This meets the requirement of restoring to a specific point in time with minimal data loss. For a 2 TB database, the cost of AWS Backup with a 24-hour retention is lower than hourly EBS snapshots, because EBS snapshots are charged per GB stored and hourly snapshots would incur higher costs even with incremental savings. Hourly EBS snapshots (Option D) only allow recovery to the nearest hour, introducing up to 60 minutes of potential data loss, which does not satisfy the 'minimal data loss' requirement.

Answer

Configure S3 Transfer Acceleration for faster backup uploads.

Answer

Use a script to copy HANA backup files to S3 every 15 minutes.

Answer

Take hourly EBS snapshots of all HANA volumes and retain them for 24 hours.

Question 14

An SAP system uses Amazon EFS for shared file storage for transport directories. The system is deployed across multiple Availability Zones. Which EFS performance mode is most suitable for this workload?

Accepted Answer

General Purpose performance mode.. General Purpose performance mode is the most suitable for SAP transport directories because it provides the lowest latency for file operations, which is critical for the frequent, small I/O operations typical of SAP transport processes. Max I/O mode, while offering higher throughput for large sequential I/O, introduces higher latency that can degrade SAP performance. General Purpose mode is the default and recommended mode for most EFS workloads, including SAP shared file systems.

Answer

Max I/O performance mode.

Answer

Provisioned Throughput mode.

Answer

Bursting Throughput mode.

Question 15

A company is planning to run SAP NetWeaver on AWS and wants to use Auto Scaling for the application server tier. Which consideration is critical when implementing Auto Scaling for SAP application servers?

Accepted Answer

Automatically register new instances with the SAP Central Services instance.. SAP application servers must be registered with the SAP Central Services instance (ASCS/SCS) to be recognized as part of the SAP system. Auto Scaling can launch new instances, but without automatic registration via sapstartsrv or the SAP Host Agent, the new instances will not be able to communicate with the Central Services instance, and the SAP system will not utilize them for workload.

Answer

Ensure the database can scale automatically with the application tier.

Answer

Enable termination protection on all Auto Scaling instances.

Answer

Use encrypted EBS volumes for all instances.