PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 4 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Which TWO of the following are best practices for securing SAP workloads on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Use IAM roles to grant EC2 instances access to AWS services.. IAM roles allow EC2 instances to securely access AWS services (e.g., S3, DynamoDB) without embedding long-term credentials. By attaching an IAM role to an EC2 instance, the instance can obtain temporary credentials via the instance metadata service, which is a best practice for securing SAP workloads on AWS.

Answer

Disable encryption in transit between application and database tiers.

Answer

Allow SSH access from the internet for administration.

Answer

Store SAP backup files in a public S3 bucket for easy access.

Question 2

Which THREE of the following are valid considerations when designing an SAP HANA backup strategy on AWS?

Accepted Answer

Use EBS snapshots for backing up HANA data volumes.. EBS snapshots provide a consistent, point-in-time backup of HANA data volumes when the database is in backup mode (e.g., using hdbsql to create a snapshot). This method is supported by SAP and AWS, and it allows for fast recovery by restoring the entire volume without needing to replay transaction logs from a separate backup.

Answer

Back up HANA data directly to Amazon S3 using standard tools.

Answer

Replicate backups to another AWS Region using S3 Cross-Region Replication.

Question 3

A company is running SAP on AWS and needs to design a disaster recovery (DR) solution with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours. The primary region is us-east-1 and the DR region is us-west-2. The SAP application uses an SAP HANA database with a size of 2 TB. Which combination of AWS services should be used to meet the DR requirements most cost-effectively?

Accepted Answer

Configure HANA System Replication (HSR) across regions and use a standby HANA instance in us-west-2 with a smaller instance size.. HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native SAP HANA replication technology that can achieve an RPO of 15 minutes or less by asynchronously replicating data across regions. By using a smaller standby instance in us-west-2, the solution meets the RTO of 4 hours (since the standby can be scaled up or promoted quickly) while minimizing ongoing DR costs. This approach is purpose-built for SAP HANA and avoids the overhead of third-party tools or backup-based restores.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication from the primary HANA database to a target in us-west-2.

Answer

Use AWS Backup with continuous backups and cross-region copy to achieve RPO of 15 minutes.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take hourly backups of the HANA database and restore in us-west-2 during a disaster.

Question 4

An SAP workload on AWS uses an Auto Scaling group for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) and Enqueue Replication Server (ERS) instances. The instances are launched with a custom AMI that includes the SAP software. During a recent failover test, the ASCS instance failed to start after being terminated and re-launched by the Auto Scaling group. The error log indicates that the ASCS instance cannot find the quorum device. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Accepted Answer

The quorum device (EBS volume) was not re-attached or was not available in the same Availability Zone as the new ASCS instance.. In an SAP on AWS high-availability setup, the ASCS and ERS instances rely on a shared quorum device (typically an EBS volume or an Amazon EFS file system) to maintain cluster state and prevent split-brain scenarios. When the Auto Scaling group terminates and re-launches the ASCS instance, the new instance must have the quorum device attached and be in the same Availability Zone as the EBS volume (since EBS volumes are AZ-specific). If the quorum device is not re-attached or is in a different AZ, the SAP cluster cannot find it, causing the ASCS instance to fail to start.

Answer

The instance type of the new ASCS instance is different from the original, causing incompatibility with the SAP kernel.

Answer

The ASCS instance does not have a public IP address, preventing communication with the quorum device.

Answer

The Security Group associated with the ASCS instance does not allow inbound traffic on the quorum port.

Question 5

A company is planning to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The database is SAP HANA with a size of 3 TB. The company wants to minimize downtime during the migration. Which migration strategy should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use HANA System Replication to replicate the database to an EC2 instance running HANA in the target AWS environment, then perform a takeover.. HANA System Replication (HSR) is the optimal strategy for minimizing downtime because it continuously replicates data from the on-premises HANA database to an EC2 instance running HANA in AWS. When the migration window opens, a simple takeover (failover) occurs, typically completing in minutes, which meets the requirement for minimal downtime. This approach avoids the lengthy export/import or backup/restore processes that would take hours for a 3 TB database.

Answer

Export the HANA database to flat files using SAP HANA Studio, upload the files to Amazon S3, and import them into an EC2 HANA instance.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication to migrate the database to Amazon RDS for SAP HANA.

Answer

Use AWS Backup to take a full backup of the on-premises HANA database and restore it to an EC2 instance in AWS.

Question 6

A company runs SAP on AWS with an SAP HANA database on an r5.8xlarge instance. The company notices high network latency between the SAP application servers and the HANA database. The application servers are in the same VPC but different subnets. Which design change would MOST effectively reduce latency?

Accepted Answer

Launch the application servers and the HANA database in the same placement group.. Placing both the SAP application servers and the HANA database in the same cluster placement group ensures they are in close physical proximity within a single Availability Zone, minimizing network hops and reducing latency. Placement groups achieve this by co-locating instances on the same high-bandwidth, low-latency network fabric, which is critical for SAP HANA's real-time data processing requirements.

Answer

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

Answer

Change the HANA database instance type to a compute-optimized instance such as c5.9xlarge.

Answer

Enable Enhanced Networking on the application servers by attaching an Elastic Network Adapter (ENA).

Question 7

A company is designing a high-availability architecture for SAP NetWeaver on AWS. The architecture includes two application server instances in different Availability Zones, a shared file system using Amazon EFS, and a database using SAP HANA with HANA System Replication (HSR). During a failover test, the application servers cannot connect to the database after the HANA secondary becomes the primary. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The SAP application servers are configured with the hostname of the primary HANA instance, which did not update after failover.. In SAP NetWeaver, application servers connect to the database using a fixed hostname or virtual IP address. After HANA System Replication (HSR) failover, the secondary becomes the primary but retains its own hostname unless a virtual hostname (e.g., using Amazon Route 53 or Elastic IP) is configured to automatically update. If the application servers are hardcoded with the original primary's hostname, they cannot resolve or reach the new primary, causing connection failure.

Answer

HANA System Replication is not configured correctly for automatic failover.

Answer

The Amazon EFS file system is not available in the secondary Availability Zone.

Answer

The security group of the application servers does not allow outbound traffic to the secondary HANA instance.

Question 8

A company is designing an SAP HANA database on AWS. The database requires high throughput and low latency for data volumes. Which TWO AWS features should be used to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the EC2 instance.. Enabling EBS optimization on an EC2 instance dedicates network bandwidth to EBS I/O, eliminating contention between network and storage traffic, which is critical for SAP HANA's high-throughput, low-latency requirements. Option E is correct because EBS io2 Block Express volumes provide up to 256,000 IOPS per volume with sub-millisecond latency, meeting the demanding performance needs of SAP HANA data volumes.

Answer

Use EBS gp3 volumes for the HANA data volume.

Answer

Use EC2 instance store volumes for the HANA data volume.

Answer

Store HANA data on Amazon S3 with S3 Express One Zone.

Question 9

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS in a single region with a multi-AZ setup. The SAP HANA database uses HANA System Replication (HSR) for high availability. The primary HANA instance is in us-east-1a and the secondary is in us-east-1b. The application servers are split across both AZs. Recently, during a maintenance window, the primary HANA instance failed unexpectedly. The secondary automatically took over. However, after the failover, the application servers in us-east-1a are experiencing higher latency when connecting to the database, while application servers in us-east-1b have normal latency. The network team confirms that the inter-AZ latency is within normal limits. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of the increased latency?

Accepted Answer

The application servers in us-east-1a are now connecting to the HANA database in us-east-1b, which adds inter-AZ latency.. After the failover, the secondary HANA instance in us-east-1b became the active database. Application servers in us-east-1a must now connect across AZs to reach the database in us-east-1b, incurring inter-AZ latency. Although the network team confirms normal inter-AZ latency, the additional network hop and physical distance between AZs still introduce higher latency compared to same-AZ connections, which explains the observed increase.

Answer

The secondary HANA instance is using a different instance type with a single Elastic Network Interface (ENI), which limits throughput.

Answer

The placement group that includes the application servers and the database is now split across AZs, reducing performance.

Answer

The EBS volumes attached to the old primary instance are still being replicated to the secondary, causing network congestion.

Question 10

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS with an Oracle database. The application servers are deployed in an Auto Scaling group across three Availability Zones. The database is hosted on a single EC2 instance in us-east-1a. The company wants to improve availability with minimal changes to the application. The database must be highly available with automatic failover and no data loss. The database size is 1 TB. The current RTO is 2 hours and RPO is 1 hour. The company is considering using Oracle Data Guard for replication. Which solution should the company implement to meet the HA requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure Oracle Data Guard with synchronous replication and Fast-Start Failover (FSFO) to automatically fail over to a standby instance in another AZ.. Oracle Data Guard with synchronous replication ensures zero data loss by committing transactions only after they are written to both primary and standby redo logs. Fast-Start Failover (FSFO) automates the failover process without manual intervention, meeting the RTO of 2 hours and RPO of 1 hour while requiring minimal application changes since the database remains Oracle-native.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate the Oracle database to a second EC2 instance in another AZ, and use an Amazon Route 53 health check to redirect traffic.

Answer

Migrate the Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle with Multi-AZ deployment and automatic failover.

Answer

Configure Oracle Data Guard with asynchronous replication to a standby instance in us-east-1b, and use a custom script to detect failure and promote the standby.

Question 11

A company runs its SAP S/4HANA production workload on AWS using an 8xlarge instance with 2,000 GB of gp3 storage for /usr/sap and 6,000 GB of io2 Block Express with 64,000 IOPS for /hana/data and /hana/log. The system experiences intermittent performance degradation during peak hours, particularly for batch jobs that heavily write to the database. The SAP team reports that the database response time spikes from under 5 milliseconds to over 200 milliseconds during these periods. The AWS account has a default EBS IOPS limit of 80,000 per region. The current io2 volume is attached as a single volume. Which combination of actions would resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Split the /hana/data volume into multiple io2 volumes, configure them as a RAID 0 stripe, and attach each to a separate EBS-optimized connection. Increase total provisioned IOPS to 80,000 distributed across volumes.. Splitting the /hana/data volume into multiple io2 volumes and configuring them as a RAID 0 stripe distributes I/O across multiple EBS-optimized connections, effectively increasing the available throughput and IOPS beyond the limits of a single volume attachment. This approach also allows the total provisioned IOPS to reach 80,000, which is the regional default limit, while each individual volume stays within its own IOPS ceiling, thus resolving the database response time spikes during peak batch write operations.

Answer

Replace the io2 volumes with larger gp3 volumes and increase the volume size to 8,000 GB to benefit from gp3 baseline performance.

Answer

Migrate to a larger instance type with higher EBS-optimized bandwidth and increase the volume IOPS to 80,000.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the existing io2 volume to 80,000 IOPS to stay within the default limit.

Question 12

A company is running an SAP HANA database on AWS using an i3.16xlarge instance. The database storage is configured with multiple EBS gp2 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to meet IOPS requirements. During a workload spike, the application experiences increased latency and the database performance degrades. The CloudWatch metrics show high Average Queue Length (avg_queue_len) on the EBS volumes but not 100% utilization of the CPU. Which design change is MOST likely to resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Replace gp2 volumes with io2 Block Express volumes to provide consistent IOPS performance.. The high Average Queue Length indicates that the EBS volumes are saturating their IOPS capacity, causing requests to queue up. gp2 volumes have a burst-bucket model that can exhaust credits under sustained high I/O, leading to throttled performance. io2 Block Express volumes provide consistent, provisioned IOPS without burst limitations, directly resolving the queuing issue without requiring instance or stripe changes.

Answer

Move the database to an i3en.24xlarge instance to increase network and EBS bandwidth.

Answer

Enable EBS optimization on the existing instance to improve throughput.

Answer

Add two additional gp2 volumes to the RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.

Question 13

A company is designing an SAP S/4HANA deployment on AWS. They want to ensure high availability for the central services (ASCS and ERS) across two Availability Zones. Which TWO of the following are required components for a typical SAP high availability setup on AWS? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Network Load Balancer to route traffic to the ASCS and ERS instances.. The AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) is required to distribute traffic to the ASCS and ERS instances across two Availability Zones. It uses health checks to detect failures and reroute traffic to the healthy instance, ensuring that the SAP central services remain available even if one AZ fails. The NLB operates at Layer 4, preserving the source IP and supporting the necessary SAP protocols like the Message Server and Enqueue Replication.

Answer

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment for the SAP HANA database.

Answer

AWS Transit Gateway to connect the two Availability Zones.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator to provide static anycast IP addresses.

Question 14

A systems administrator is troubleshooting an SAP HANA database that runs on an EC2 instance. The exhibit shows the block device mappings of the EC2 instance. The administrator needs to ensure that the data volumes (/dev/sdf and /dev/sdg) are not accidentally terminated when the instance is terminated. However, the administrator also wants to take a nightly snapshot of these volumes using AWS Backup. Which of the following is a potential issue with the current configuration?

Accepted Answer

The volumes are not tagged, so AWS Backup may not automatically include them in backup plans.. AWS Backup uses resource tags to identify which resources to include in backup plans. If the volumes /dev/sdf and /dev/sdg are not tagged with the appropriate key-value pairs that match the backup plan's tag-based selection criteria, AWS Backup will not automatically discover and include them in nightly snapshots. This can lead to missing backups for critical SAP HANA data volumes.

Answer

The volume /dev/sdf has DeleteOnTermination set to false, which will cause data persistence issues.

Answer

The device names /dev/sdf and /dev/sdg are reserved for NVMe instance storage and should not be used for EBS.

Answer

The volumes are attached to a running instance, which prevents snapshot creation.

Question 15

A retail company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS. The system includes an SAP HANA database on an r5.8xlarge instance with 4TB of storage using a single EBS io1 volume with 16000 provisioned IOPS. The application experiences periodic slowdowns during end-of-month financial closing, which typically lasts for 2 hours. The CloudWatch metrics show that during the slowdown, the EBS volume's Average Queue Length peaks at 20, and the instance's EBS Bandwidth is at 3500 Mbps (the maximum for r5.8xlarge is 4750 Mbps). The database team confirms that HANA is not CPU-bound during these periods. The SAP team wants a cost-effective solution to eliminate the performance bottleneck. Which solution should be recommended?

Accepted Answer

Move to an r5n.24xlarge instance and use multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe to increase throughput.. The bottleneck is EBS bandwidth, not IOPS. The r5.8xlarge instance has a maximum EBS bandwidth of 4750 Mbps, and during the slowdown the volume is already using 3500 Mbps, leaving limited headroom. By moving to an r5n.24xlarge instance, which offers significantly higher EBS bandwidth (up to 19,000 Mbps), and using multiple io1 volumes in a RAID 0 stripe, you can distribute the I/O load and increase both throughput and IOPS, eliminating the queue length issue cost-effectively without over-provisioning a single volume.

Answer

Use an Amazon FSx for Lustre file system as the HANA data volume for higher throughput.

Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the io1 volume to 32000 IOPS to reduce queue length.

Answer

Switch to a gp3 volume with 16000 IOPS and 1000 MB/s throughput to reduce cost.