PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 28 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is running SAP NetWeaver on AWS. The system uses an SAP HANA database. The operations team needs to monitor the database performance and receive alerts when specific metrics exceed thresholds. Which AWS service should be used to collect and analyze SAP HANA metrics?

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

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch is the correct service because it can collect, monitor, and analyze SAP HANA database metrics using the AWS CloudWatch Agent or the SAP HANA CloudWatch integration. By configuring custom metrics or using the SAP HANA monitoring views, operations teams can set CloudWatch Alarms to trigger notifications when specific thresholds are exceeded, enabling proactive performance management.

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Amazon Inspector

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AWS CloudTrail

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AWS Config

Question 2

A company is deploying SAP Business Suite on AWS. They need to ensure that the SAP system can handle a sudden increase in user load without manual intervention. Which AWS service should be used to automatically scale the SAP application servers?

Accepted Answer

AWS Auto Scaling. AWS Auto Scaling is the correct service because it automatically adjusts the number of SAP application server instances based on demand, using scaling policies tied to metrics like CPU utilization or memory. This ensures the SAP system can handle sudden user load spikes without manual intervention, which is a core requirement for elastic SAP deployments on AWS.

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AWS Lambda

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Amazon Elastic Container Service

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Elastic Load Balancing

Question 3

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS. They want to ensure that the database is backed up automatically and the backups are stored securely and durably. Which AWS service should be used to store the backup files?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is the correct service for storing SAP HANA backup files because it provides a highly durable (99.999999999% durability), scalable, and secure object storage platform. SAP HANA supports backing up directly to S3 using the Backint agent or via third-party backup tools, and S3 offers features like server-side encryption (SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS) and lifecycle policies for cost-effective long-term retention.

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Amazon EBS Snapshots

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Amazon RDS

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Amazon Elastic File System

Question 4

An SAP on AWS environment is experiencing intermittent connectivity issues between the SAP application servers and the SAP HANA database. Both are in the same VPC but in different Availability Zones. The network team has confirmed that the security groups allow traffic on the required ports. What is a likely cause of the issue?

Accepted Answer

Network ACLs are misconfigured, blocking return traffic.. Network ACLs are stateless, meaning they evaluate inbound and outbound traffic separately. Even if inbound rules allow traffic from the SAP application servers to the HANA database, the outbound rules on the database subnet's NACL must explicitly allow the return traffic (ephemeral ports) back to the application servers. Misconfigured outbound rules in the NACL can drop the response packets, causing intermittent connectivity issues between the application and database tiers across Availability Zones.

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AWS Shield Advanced is blocking legitimate traffic.

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VPC Flow Logs are enabled and dropping packets.

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The VPC is using AWS Direct Connect, which adds latency.

Question 5

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS and needs to encrypt data at rest for all SAP-related storage. Which combination of AWS services can be used to achieve this? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 server-side encryption. Amazon EBS encryption (Option D) provides at-rest encryption for the block storage volumes used by SAP EC2 instances, ensuring data on the underlying disks is encrypted. Amazon S3 server-side encryption (Option B) encrypts data at rest in S3 buckets, which can be used for SAP backups, log archives, or other SAP-related object storage. Together, they cover the primary storage types for SAP on AWS.

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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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AWS WAF

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Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Question 6

A company is planning to migrate its SAP landscape to AWS. The environment includes SAP HANA databases for production and non-production. Which AWS service can be used to automate the provisioning of the SAP HANA infrastructure? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation (Option A) is correct because it allows you to define SAP HANA infrastructure as code using templates, automating the provisioning of EC2 instances, storage, networking, and security groups required for SAP HANA. This aligns with SAP's deployment best practices on AWS, enabling repeatable and consistent infrastructure setup for both production and non-production environments. AWS Service Catalog (Option D) is also correct because it enables organizations to create and manage a catalog of IT services, including pre-approved SAP HANA infrastructure products. Service Catalog integrates with CloudFormation to provision standardized environments, allowing administrators to control which resources (like SAP HANA instances) can be deployed by end users, thus automating and governing the provisioning process.

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Amazon Macie

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AWS OpsWorks

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AWS CodePipeline

Question 7

A company is running a mission-critical SAP S/4HANA system on AWS in the us-east-1 region. The system uses a two-tier architecture with the SAP application server and HANA database on the same EC2 instance. The instance type is an r5.24xlarge with 12 x 2 TB gp3 EBS volumes striped using LVM. The HANA data volume is 10 TB. The company has a disaster recovery (DR) requirement with an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 4 hours. The DR site must be in us-west-2. The company currently takes daily EBS snapshots of the data volume and copies them to us-west-2. However, they are not meeting the RPO. The operations team is considering implementing SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) asynchronously to the DR region. However, network latency between us-east-1 and us-west-2 averages 60 ms. The SAP HANA database has a heavy write workload, with average log writes of 500 MB/sec. The team is concerned that the replication may fall behind and cause data loss. What should the team do to meet the DR requirements while minimizing data loss?

Accepted Answer

Implement HSR asynchronously and also enable HANA log backups to an S3 bucket in us-west-2.. Combining asynchronous HANA System Replication (HSR) with HANA log backups to an S3 bucket in us-west-2 provides a dual-layer protection strategy. Asynchronous HSR will replicate log changes in near real-time, but given the 60 ms latency and 500 MB/sec write workload, it may fall behind; the log backups act as a safety net to capture any log data that hasn't been replicated yet, allowing recovery with minimal data loss while still meeting the 15-minute RPO.

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Switch to synchronous replication to ensure zero data loss.

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Increase the HANA log buffer size to reduce the frequency of log flushes, so that less data is sent over the network.

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Use HSR with multiple replicas in us-west-2 to improve replication speed.

Question 8

An SAP Basis administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue on an SAP HANA database running on AWS. The database is on an EC2 instance of type r5.12xlarge with 8 x 1 TB EBS io2 Block Express volumes configured for maximum IOPS. The application team reports that batch jobs are taking longer than expected. The administrator checks Amazon CloudWatch metrics and sees that the EBS write latency averages 2 ms, which is within the expected range. However, the CPU utilization is at 95% consistently during batch runs. The HANA index server is using 70% of the CPU. The administrator also notices that the HANA threads are mostly waiting on 'lock wait' events. What is the MOST likely cause of the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

There are SQL statement contention and locking issues in the HANA database.. The high CPU utilization (95%) combined with HANA threads waiting on 'lock wait' events indicates that SQL statement contention and locking issues are the primary bottleneck. Lock waits occur when multiple transactions compete for the same database resources, causing threads to spin or block, which consumes CPU cycles without making progress. This explains why CPU is saturated despite EBS write latency being normal (2 ms) and IOPS being sufficient.

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The EBS volumes are not providing enough IOPS for the workload.

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The HANA parameter 'max_concurrency' is set too low.

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The EC2 instance type is undersized for the HANA workload.

Question 9

A company is planning to migrate SAP S/4HANA to AWS. The system has a high transaction rate and requires low network latency between SAP application servers and the database. Which AWS infrastructure design minimizes network latency between the SAP application tier and the database tier?

Accepted Answer

Place all SAP application servers and the database server in the same Availability Zone.. Placing all SAP application servers and the database server in the same Availability Zone (AZ) minimizes network latency by keeping traffic within a single, high-bandwidth, low-latency AWS data center. SAP S/4HANA with a high transaction rate is sensitive to inter-AZ latency (typically 1-2 ms), which can degrade performance for synchronous database calls. Co-locating all tiers in one AZ ensures the lowest possible round-trip time for SAP's dialog work processes and database commits.

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Place the database server in one Availability Zone and application servers in another to improve fault tolerance.

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Use a cluster placement group for the application servers and a separate placement group for the database.

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Use a mix of instance types optimized for compute and memory across different Availability Zones.

Question 10

A company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS. The database size is 2 TB. They need to restore the database to a point-in-time from the last 24 hours. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this with minimal impact on production performance?

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA Backup & Recovery using Backint agent to Amazon S3.. SAP HANA Backup & Recovery using the Backint agent to Amazon S3 is the native, AWS-integrated method for performing point-in-time recovery (PITR) of SAP HANA databases. Backint offloads backup and restore operations directly to S3, bypassing the EC2 instance's I/O stack, which minimizes performance impact on production workloads. This approach supports incremental and log backups, enabling precise PITR within the last 24 hours without requiring full-volume snapshots.

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Use AWS Backup with a backup plan for the EC2 instance.

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Use Amazon EBS snapshots of the database volume.

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Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) for continuous replication.

Question 11

An SAP system on AWS experiences intermittent connectivity issues between the SAP Central Services (SCS) instance and the application servers. The SCS instance is in a private subnet in us-east-1a, and the application servers are spread across us-east-1a and us-east-1b. Security groups allow traffic on all required ports. What is the MOST likely cause of the intermittent connectivity?

Accepted Answer

The network ACLs are blocking the traffic.. Network ACLs are stateless and must explicitly allow both inbound and outbound traffic on ephemeral ports. If the outbound rules for the SCS subnet's NACL do not allow return traffic on high ports (e.g., 1024–65535), or if the application servers' subnet NACL blocks inbound traffic from the SCS instance, connections will intermittently fail. Security groups are stateful and automatically allow return traffic, but NACLs are not, making them the likely culprit for intermittent connectivity across different Availability Zones.

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The route tables do not have a route for the SCS subnet.

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The Internet Gateway is misconfigured.

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The VPC peering connection is not established correctly.

Question 12

An SAP workload on AWS uses a single Availability Zone deployment. The company wants to improve high availability without changing the existing architecture significantly. Which action should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Add a second SAP application server in a different Availability Zone and configure load balancing.. Adding a second SAP application server in a different Availability Zone and configuring load balancing provides high availability by distributing traffic across multiple AZs, ensuring that if one AZ fails, the application remains accessible. This approach aligns with SAP's recommended architecture for multi-AZ deployments without requiring significant changes to the existing single-AZ setup, as it only adds an additional application tier instance and a load balancer.

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Use an Amazon EBS volume attached to multiple instances across AZs.

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Increase the size of the EC2 instances to handle failover.

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Enable EBS Multi-Attach on the database volume.

Question 13

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The SAP application servers and database are in the same VPC. The security team requires encryption in transit between all SAP components. Which combination of services and configurations meets this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Enable SAP SNC with TLS certificates on all SAP instances.. SAP SNC (Secure Network Communications) with TLS certificates provides end-to-end encryption for communication between SAP components, including application servers and databases, regardless of network topology. Since all SAP components reside in the same VPC, the encryption requirement is satisfied at the application layer without relying on network-level encryption. SNC ensures that data in transit between SAP systems is encrypted using X.509 certificates, meeting the security team's mandate.

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Use AWS Transit Gateway with encryption enabled.

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Use AWS VPN to connect all SAP instances to a single endpoint.

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Create a VPC peering connection between the application and database subnets.

Question 14

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the database can be restored to any point in time within the last 48 hours with minimal data loss. Which backup strategy should be used?

Accepted Answer

Schedule daily full backups and hourly incremental log backups to Amazon S3 using Backint.. SAP HANA supports Backint integration with Amazon S3 for log backups, enabling point-in-time recovery (PITR) with minimal data loss. Daily full backups combined with hourly incremental log backups ensure that any transaction committed within the last 48 hours can be restored, meeting the RPO requirement of minimal data loss.

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Use Amazon EBS snapshots every 6 hours.

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Use AWS Backup with a daily backup plan.

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Take weekly full backups and daily differential backups to Amazon S3.

Question 15

A company is migrating an SAP NetWeaver system to AWS. The system uses an on-premises shared file system (NFS). Which TWO AWS services can provide a scalable, highly available NFS share for SAP transport directories?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) (option C) is correct because it is a fully managed, elastic NFSv4 file system that scales automatically and is highly available across multiple Availability Zones, making it suitable for SAP transport directories. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (option E) is also correct because it provides a fully managed, highly available NFS file system with NetApp ONTAP features and multi-AZ deployment, which supports SAP transport directory requirements. Option A (AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway) is not correct because it presents SMB/NFS access to Amazon S3 but is primarily a hybrid caching gateway, not a native scalable, highly available NFS file system for SAP. Option B (Amazon EBS with a shared volume) is not correct because EBS volumes are block storage attached to a single EC2 instance and do not natively provide a shared NFS file system. Option D (Amazon S3 with S3 File Gateway) is not correct because S3 is object storage and S3 File Gateway is a file interface to S3, not a native NFS file system designed for SAP transport directories.

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AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway

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Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) with a shared volume

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Amazon S3 with S3 File Gateway