PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 29 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An SAP administrator is migrating an SAP Business Suite system from on-premises to AWS. The system uses an Oracle database that is 2 TB in size. The bandwidth between the on-premises data center and AWS is limited to 100 Mbps. The migration must be completed within a weekend (48 hours). The administrator decides to use AWS DMS for ongoing replication after an initial full load. However, the initial full load takes too long. What should the administrator do to accelerate the initial full load?

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

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Snowball Edge to physically transfer the database backup to AWS, then restore and use DMS for ongoing replication.. The 2 TB database over a 100 Mbps link would take approximately 47 hours just for the transfer (2 TB * 8 / 100 Mbps / 3600 seconds ≈ 47.6 hours), leaving no time for restore and validation. AWS Snowball Edge provides a physical shipping alternative that bypasses network bandwidth constraints entirely, allowing the full load to be completed within the weekend. After restoring the backup from Snowball, AWS DMS can be used for ongoing replication of changes.

Answer

Disable encryption on the database backup to reduce transfer overhead.

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Increase the size of the DMS replication instance to the largest available.

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Use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration to speed up the upload.

Question 2

A company is migrating its SAP HANA database to AWS. The SAP HANA database requires high throughput and low latency for data persistence. Which AWS storage solution should be used for the HANA data volume to meet performance requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) EBS volumes for the data volume.. SAP HANA is an in-memory database that relies on persistent storage for data volume writes during savepoints and log writes. Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) EBS volumes deliver consistent, low-latency performance with configurable IOPS, which is required to meet SAP HANA's strict throughput and latency SLAs. AWS specifically certifies io1/io2 EBS volumes for SAP HANA data volumes in production environments.

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Use Amazon FSx for Lustre as primary persistent storage for HANA data.

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Use General Purpose SSD (gp2) EBS volumes for the data volume.

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Use Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) EBS volumes for the data volume.

Question 3

A company is implementing an SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The system must be highly available across multiple Availability Zones. Which of the following strategies should the company implement for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) instance to meet high availability requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a Pacemaker cluster with two EC2 instances across Availability Zones using a shared file system.. SAP Central Services (ASCS) requires a highly available cluster that can manage the Enqueue and Message Server processes. A Pacemaker cluster across two Availability Zones, using a shared file system (e.g., Amazon EFS or a replicated file system), provides the necessary fencing, resource monitoring, and failover for ASCS. This architecture ensures that if the primary ASCS instance fails, the secondary instance in the other AZ can take over with minimal downtime, meeting the high availability requirement.

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Deploy a single EC2 instance with a large instance type to handle failover.

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Configure SAP HANA System Replication between two Availability Zones.

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Use Amazon RDS for SAP Central Services with Multi-AZ deployment.

Question 4

A company is running SAP NetWeaver on AWS. The SAP application server instances need to be distributed within a single Availability Zone for low-latency connectivity. Which AWS feature should be used to ensure low-latency connectivity between these instances?

Accepted Answer

Placement Group (cluster). A cluster placement group places instances into a low-latency, high-bandwidth network within a single Availability Zone. This is ideal for SAP application servers that require these characteristics. For multi-AZ high availability, a separate placement group per AZ or spread placement groups may be considered, but for the requirement stated in this question, the cluster placement group (Option B) is correct.

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Network ACL

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Internet Gateway

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VPC Peering

Question 5

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for its SAP HANA database on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1. The DR site must be in us-west-2. The company requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours. Which AWS service should be used for replicating HANA data?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication to an EC2 instance in us-west-2.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native, SAP-supported mechanism for replicating HANA databases to a secondary site with low RPO (typically seconds to minutes) and RTO (minutes to hours). It continuously ships log entries from the primary to a standby EC2 instance in us-west-2, meeting the 15-minute RPO and 2-hour RTO requirements. AWS Database Migration Service, EBS Snapshots, and S3 Cross-Region Replication do not provide the log-level, consistent replication needed for SAP HANA's ACID compliance and failover semantics.

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service with ongoing replication.

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Amazon EBS Snapshots copied to us-west-2 every hour.

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Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication for HANA data files.

Question 6

A company is running SAP Business Suite on AWS. The SAP application servers are behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Users are experiencing session timeouts because the ALB is distributing requests to different application servers. What should the company configure on the ALB to maintain session stickiness?

Accepted Answer

Enable sticky sessions using the ALB-generated cookie.. Enabling sticky sessions (session affinity) on an Application Load Balancer using the ALB-generated cookie (AWSALB) ensures that all requests from a user session are routed to the same target (SAP application server). This prevents session timeouts caused by requests being distributed to different servers, which would lose in-memory session state. The ALB-generated cookie is the simplest and most appropriate method for SAP Business Suite, as it does not require custom application code.

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Use a Network Load Balancer instead of an Application Load Balancer.

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Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.

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Enable path-based routing to route all requests from a user to the same server.

Question 7

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS. The SAP application servers are in private subnets, and the database is in a separate private subnet. The company needs to allow the application servers to communicate with the database. Which AWS networking component should be configured to allow this traffic?

Accepted Answer

Security Group rules allowing traffic between the security groups.. Security groups act as a virtual firewall for instances, and you can reference another security group as a source in inbound rules. This allows the application servers' security group to be specified as the source for the database security group's inbound rule, enabling traffic between the subnets without exposing the database to the entire subnet. This is the most secure and AWS-recommended method for controlling traffic between instances within the same VPC.

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VPC Peering connection between subnets.

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Internet Gateway

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Network ACL with inbound rules for the database subnet.

Question 8

A company is running SAP HANA on AWS. The HANA database is deployed on an r5.8xlarge instance. The company notices high CPU utilization on the instance during peak loads. The SAP team confirms that the HANA workload requires more CPU capacity. What is the most cost-effective way to increase CPU capacity without changing the instance family?

Accepted Answer

Resize the instance to a larger instance type in the r5 family.. Resizing the instance to a larger type within the r5 family (e.g., r5.12xlarge or r5.16xlarge) directly increases vCPU and memory capacity without changing the instance family, which is the most cost-effective approach for a single-node SAP HANA deployment. This avoids the complexity, licensing costs, and network latency of scale-out configurations while meeting the CPU demand.

Answer

Add more EBS volumes with higher IOPS to offload CPU.

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Launch additional r5.8xlarge instances and configure HANA scale-out.

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Configure Auto Scaling to add instances during peak load.

Question 9

A company is designing a backup strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. The HANA database is 2 TB in size. The company requires daily full backups and hourly incremental backups. Which AWS service should be used to store the backups cost-effectively with high durability?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier.. Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier is correct because S3 provides 99.999999999% durability and cost-effective storage for SAP HANA backups. Lifecycle policies automatically move older backups to lower-cost tiers like Glacier, reducing costs while meeting the 2 TB database's daily full and hourly incremental backup requirements.

Answer

Amazon EBS Snapshots stored in Amazon S3.

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AWS Storage Gateway with volume gateway.

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Amazon EFS for shared backup storage.

Question 10

Which THREE of the following are best practices for securing SAP systems on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Encrypt EBS volumes using AWS KMS.. Encrypting EBS volumes using AWS KMS is a best practice because it ensures data at rest is protected with encryption keys managed by AWS Key Management Service. This is critical for SAP systems that handle sensitive business data, as it meets compliance requirements and prevents unauthorized access to the underlying storage. KMS integration with EBS provides transparent encryption with minimal performance impact, and key rotation policies can be enforced automatically.

Answer

Place all SAP instances in public subnets for easier access.

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Store AWS credentials in the SAP application code for API access.

Question 11

Which TWO of the following are valid options for implementing high availability for SAP NetWeaver on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Deploy two EC2 instances across Availability Zones with a shared file system (EFS) and a cluster manager.. Deploying two EC2 instances across Availability Zones with a shared file system (Amazon EFS) and a cluster manager (e.g., Pacemaker for Linux or Windows Server Failover Cluster) provides the high-availability architecture required for SAP NetWeaver. The cluster manager monitors the SAP Central Services (ASCS/ERS) and automatically fails over to the standby instance if the primary fails, while EFS provides a shared, highly available file system that both instances can access. This setup meets SAP's HA guidelines for a multi-AZ deployment on AWS.

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Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ for SAP Central Services.

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Use Amazon S3 for shared storage and configure manual failover.

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Run SAP Central Services on a single large EC2 instance.

Question 12

Which TWO of the following are required when integrating SAP HANA with AWS Direct Connect for hybrid connectivity?

Accepted Answer

A Virtual Private Gateway attached to the VPC.. A Virtual Private Gateway (VGW) is required to attach the VPC to the Direct Connect connection, enabling private IP traffic between on-premises and the VPC. Without a VGW, the Direct Connect virtual interface cannot terminate within the VPC, making hybrid connectivity impossible for SAP HANA workloads that require low-latency, private network paths.

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A Public Virtual Interface to access the VPC.

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A Direct Connect Gateway for the connection.

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A VPN tunnel between on-premises and AWS.

Question 13

A company is running a large SAP S/4HANA production system on AWS. The system consists of a single HANA database instance running on an r5.24xlarge EC2 instance (with 768 GB of RAM), and multiple application server instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The database uses six EBS io1 volumes for data and log files, each with 20,000 provisioned IOPS. The application servers are in an Auto Scaling group. Recently, the company experienced a prolonged database outage when the primary EC2 instance failed. The recovery took over 4 hours because a new instance had to be launched and snapshots restored. The company wants to improve the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to less than 30 minutes for the HANA database. They also want to minimize data loss with an RPO of less than 5 minutes. The company has a second AWS region (us-west-2) available for disaster recovery but prefers to keep costs low for the DR site. Which solution should the company implement?

Accepted Answer

Set up SAP HANA System Replication to a standby HANA instance in a different Availability Zone. Use a smaller instance type for the standby to reduce costs. Automate failover using a cluster manager like Pacemaker.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with a standby instance in a different Availability Zone provides synchronous replication, achieving an RPO of less than 5 minutes, and automated failover via a cluster manager like Pacemaker can bring the database online in under 30 minutes. Using a smaller instance for the standby reduces DR costs while still allowing the system to run in degraded mode during failover. This meets the RTO and RPO requirements without the high cost of a full-sized DR site in another region.

Answer

Configure SAP HANA System Replication to a standby instance in the same region but use a larger instance to ensure capacity.

Answer

Configure automated Amazon EBS snapshots every 5 minutes and create an AMI for the HANA instance. In the event of a failure, launch a new instance from the AMI in the same Availability Zone.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS for SAP HANA with Multi-AZ deployment to automatically failover to a standby in another Availability Zone.

Question 14

A company is preparing to migrate its SAP ECC 6.0 system to SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The current on-premises system includes a single application server and a database server running Oracle. The total database size is 1.5 TB. The company plans to use a homogeneous migration approach by exporting the existing Oracle database and importing it into a new SAP HANA database running on AWS. The migration must be completed within a tight weekend window. The company has established a 1 Gbps AWS Direct Connect connection to AWS. Which migration strategy should the company use to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Use the SAP Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO). Perform the migration in a weekend window using the delta replication feature.. SAP Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO) supports a homogeneous migration from Oracle to SAP HANA while performing both the system update and database migration in a single step. The delta replication feature allows initial full load followed by continuous replication of changes, enabling a short downtime window by switching over only after the delta catch-up is complete. This approach is specifically designed for tight migration windows and leverages the 1 Gbps Direct Connect for efficient data transfer.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate the Oracle database to HANA, and then switch over.

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Use an Application Load Balancer to redirect traffic to the new HANA system after exporting the data to S3.

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Use the SAP HANA Studio migration wizard to export the Oracle database and import it into HANA. This is the simplest method.

Question 15

A company runs SAP Business Warehouse (BW) on AWS. The BW system uses a single HANA database instance on an r5.12xlarge EC2 instance with 4 EBS io1 volumes for data. The company has noticed that during peak data loads, the CPU utilization on the HANA instance reaches 90%. An SAP consultant recommends increasing the CPU capacity. The company wants to minimize costs and avoid over-provisioning. What is the most cost-effective solution to increase CPU capacity for the HANA instance?

Accepted Answer

Change the EC2 instance type to a larger size in the r5 family, such as r5.16xlarge, to add more vCPUs.. The simplest and most cost-effective way to increase CPU capacity is to resize the EC2 instance to a larger instance type within the same family (e.g., r5.16xlarge or r5.24xlarge). This provides more vCPUs without needing to change the architecture. Option B is incorrect because increasing EBS volume IOPS does not add CPU capacity. Option C is incorrect because launching additional HANA instances for scale-out is complex and more expensive. Option D is incorrect because using a different instance family (e.g., compute-optimized) may require reconfiguration and is not as straightforward as resizing within the same family.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the EBS volumes to improve I/O performance.

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Deploy additional HANA worker nodes and configure a scale-out system.

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Migrate the HANA instance to a compute-optimized instance family, such as c5.