PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 6 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is planning to migrate their SAP HANA database to AWS. Which TWO of the following are valid EC2 instance types for SAP HANA? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

x1e.32xlarge. Option D (x1e.32xlarge) is correct because the X1e family is a memory-optimized instance type certified by SAP for SAP HANA, offering 3,904 GiB of RAM across 128 vCPUs, which meets HANA's memory-to-CPU ratio requirements for scale-up deployments. Option E (r5.8xlarge) is correct because the R5 family is also SAP-certified for HANA, with the r5.8xlarge providing 256 GiB of RAM and 32 vCPUs, suitable for smaller HANA production and non-production workloads. Option A (c5.9xlarge) is incorrect because C5 is a compute-optimized family not certified for SAP HANA, as it lacks the required memory-to-vCPU ratio. Option B (t3.2xlarge) is incorrect because T3 burstable instances are not SAP-certified for HANA and cannot guarantee the sustained performance HANA requires. Option C (i3.8xlarge) is incorrect because I3 is a storage-optimized (NVMe) family not certified for SAP HANA production workloads.

Answer

c5.9xlarge

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t3.2xlarge

Answer

i3.8xlarge

Question 2

An SAP administrator is creating an IAM policy for an automation script that needs to start and stop a specific SAP HANA EC2 instance. The policy is shown in the exhibit. However, the script fails with an authorization error when trying to start the instance. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The ARN in the resource element does not match the actual instance ID.. The policy uses a resource ARN that specifies a particular instance ID. If the ARN does not match the actual instance ID of the SAP HANA EC2 instance, the `ec2:StartInstances` action will fail with an authorization error because IAM evaluates the resource ARN against the instance being started. AWS IAM policies require an exact match between the resource ARN in the policy and the instance ID for actions that operate on specific resources.

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The policy is missing an effect for the specific instance.

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The policy does not include ec2:DescribeInstances action.

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The script does not have the correct region specified.

Question 3

An SAP administrator configures SAP HANA backup using Backint as shown in the exhibit. The backup job fails with an error indicating that the bucket 'sap-hana-backup-prod' does not exist. The administrator confirms that the bucket name is correct. What is the most likely cause of the failure?

Accepted Answer

The bucket is in a different AWS region than the EC2 instance.. The SAP HANA Backint agent communicates with Amazon S3 using the AWS SDK, which resolves the bucket endpoint based on the region configured in the agent or the instance metadata. If the bucket 'sap-hana-backup-prod' exists in a different AWS region than the EC2 instance, the Backint agent will attempt to access the bucket using the wrong regional endpoint, resulting in a 'bucket does not exist' error. This is a common misconfiguration when the Backint parameter file does not explicitly set the correct region or when the instance's default region differs from the bucket's region.

Answer

The IAM role used by the instance does not have s3:PutObject permission.

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The chunk size is too large for the bucket.

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The bucket has a bucket policy that denies access.

Question 4

A company is designing an SAP HANA multi-node scale-out deployment on AWS. The system requires high bandwidth and low latency between nodes. Which AWS networking feature should be used to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA). Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) is correct because it provides OS-bypass capabilities using the Libfabric API, enabling direct memory access (DMA) between SAP HANA nodes. This eliminates kernel overhead, delivering the high bandwidth (up to 100 Gbps per adapter) and ultra-low latency (microsecond-level) required for SAP HANA multi-node scale-out workloads, where inter-node communication is critical for table partitioning and data replication.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

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Transit Gateway

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VPC Peering

Question 5

An SAP application on AWS is experiencing high network latency and packet loss between the SAP application server and the SAP HANA database. The application and database are in the same AWS Region and Availability Zone. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

TCP segmentation offloading (TSO) is enabled on the HANA database instance.. C is correct because TCP segmentation offloading (TSO) on the HANA database instance can cause the network interface to deliver oversized TCP segments to the SAP application server, which may not handle them correctly, leading to packet loss and high latency. This is a known issue in SAP on AWS environments where TSO offloads segmentation to the NIC, but if the receiving side lacks proper support or the network path has MTU mismatches, fragmentation and retransmissions occur.

Answer

Jumbo frames are enabled on the application server but not on the database server.

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The instances are not in a placement group.

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The Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) driver is not installed.

Question 6

An SAP NetWeaver system on AWS needs to be highly available across two Availability Zones. Which AWS service should be used to manage the floating IP address used by the SAP application servers?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator is the correct service for managing a floating IP address for SAP application servers across Availability Zones. It provides static anycast IP addresses that serve as a single point of entry. By associating Global Accelerator with an internal NLB or ALB in each AZ, it can automatically route traffic to healthy endpoints using health checks. This effectively provides a floating IP that does not require DNS propagation or manual IP remapping, ensuring high availability.

Answer

VPC Peering

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Elastic IP address

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Amazon Route 53 with failover routing

Question 7

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and wants to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) to replicate the HANA server to the DR region.. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) provides continuous block-level replication of the entire SAP HANA server, including OS, application, and data volumes, with sub-minute RPO and RTO of minutes to hours. This meets the 15-minute RPO and 2-hour RTO requirements by enabling rapid failover to a fully provisioned instance in the DR region without manual scaling or data loss from periodic snapshots.

Answer

Configure HANA System Replication (HSR) to a small instance in the DR region and scale up on failover.

Answer

Take daily EBS snapshots of the HANA data volumes and copy them to the DR region.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate HANA to an RDS instance in the DR region.

Question 8

A company is deploying SAP S/4HANA on AWS and needs to ensure that the database and application servers are in the same placement group to minimize latency. However, the instance types required for the HANA database are not available in the same placement group due to insufficient capacity. What should the company do to maintain low latency?

Accepted Answer

Use a spread placement group instead of a cluster placement group.. A spread placement group is the correct choice because it spreads instances across distinct underlying hardware, reducing the risk of correlated failures while still keeping them in the same Availability Zone to minimize latency. Unlike a cluster placement group, which requires all instances to be on the same rack and can suffer from capacity constraints, a spread placement group does not enforce a single rack placement, so it can accommodate different instance types even when the cluster placement group lacks capacity. This ensures low latency for SAP S/4HANA communication between database and application servers without violating placement group constraints.

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Place all instances in the same Availability Zone without a placement group.

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Use a different instance type for the database that is available in the placement group.

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Place the database in a different AWS Region and use AWS Direct Connect.

Question 9

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

Accepted Answer

Install HANA on a separate EBS volume mounted under /hana/data. Option A is correct because SAP HANA on AWS best practice is to place the HANA data and log files on separate, dedicated EBS volumes (e.g., mounted at /hana/data and /hana/log) rather than on the root volume, which isolates I/O, allows independent snapshotting, and enables performance tuning per workload. Option D is correct because EBS io2 Block Express volumes deliver the high IOPS, low latency, and durability required for HANA data and log volumes, and they support the SAP-certified storage performance needed for production HANA deployments. Option B is not recommended because SAP HANA requires sufficient RAM to hold all data in memory, and relying on swap space degrades performance and is explicitly discouraged; swap should generally be disabled or minimized. Option C is incorrect because EBS multi-attach is not supported for SAP HANA shared storage in scale-out; HANA scale-out uses shared storage such as Amazon EFS or FSx for Lustre, and multi-attach is limited to specific clustered filesystems, not HANA shared volumes. Option E is incorrect because changing the hostname after HANA installation breaks the HANA system configuration and license binding; the hostname must be set correctly before installation.

Answer

Configure swap space on the instance to handle memory pressure

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Enable multi-attach on EBS volumes for HANA shared storage in scale-out

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Change the hostname after the HANA installation to match the DNS name

Question 10

Which THREE of the following are valid considerations for designing SAP workloads on AWS to achieve high availability within a single AWS Region? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use a cluster with a shared file system (e.g., Amazon EFS or FSx) for SAP ASCS. Option C is correct because SAP ASCS/ERS high availability in a single Region requires a cluster (e.g., Pacemaker or Windows Failover Cluster) with a shared file system such as Amazon EFS or Amazon FSx for Windows File Server to hold the ASCS global and profile data so the enqueue service can be taken over by the ERS node. Option D is correct because SAP application servers (PAS/AAS) use a floating IP that must move between EC2 instances during failover, and this is implemented by attaching/detaching or reassigning an Elastic Network Interface (ENI) so the IP address follows the active node without DNS changes. Option E is correct because HANA System Replication (HSR) with automatic failover requires a third instance (or an external arbitrator) acting as a quorum/tie-breaker to prevent split-brain and enable the cluster to decide which node should take over. Option A is not a valid design consideration because ENSA2 is a replication mechanism between ASCS and ERS, not something that uses AWS Network Load Balancer; NLB is used for load balancing, not for ENSA2 replication. Option B is not correct because HANA scale-out with HSR across two nodes is not a standard high-availability design for a single Region; scale-out is for performance/scale, and HSR HA is typically a scale-up two-node plus quorum setup, not scale-out with HSR across two nodes.

Answer

Use AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) for SAP Enqueue Replication 2 (ENSA2)

Answer

Use HANA scale-out with HSR across two nodes for high availability

Question 11

A company is migrating its SAP HANA database to AWS. Which instance type is specifically designed for SAP HANA and certified for production workloads?

Accepted Answer

x1e.xlarge. The x1e.xlarge instance is part of the AWS X1e family, which is specifically designed for memory-intensive workloads like SAP HANA and is certified by SAP for production deployments. SAP HANA requires large memory footprints and high memory-to-vCPU ratios, which the X1e instances provide with up to 3,904 GiB of memory and 128 vCPUs, meeting SAP's certification requirements.

Answer

c5.xlarge

Answer

r5.xlarge

Answer

t3.xlarge

Question 12

An SAP administrator notices that the SAP application server on AWS is experiencing high latency when connecting to the SAP HANA database. The database is on a separate EC2 instance in the same VPC. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Enhanced Networking is not enabled on the EC2 instances.. High latency between an SAP application server and a SAP HANA database in the same VPC is most likely caused by Enhanced Networking not being enabled on the EC2 instances. Enhanced Networking uses the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) to provide higher bandwidth, higher packet-per-second performance, and consistently lower inter-instance latencies. Without it, network traffic is handled by the Xen or Nitro hypervisor's default driver, which introduces additional overhead and latency, especially under the high-throughput, low-latency requirements of SAP HANA communication.

Answer

EBS optimization is not enabled on the application server.

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The HANA database is using a public IP address.

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The instances are not in a placement group.

Question 13

A company is running SAP ERP on AWS. They want to implement automated backups for the SAP HANA database using AWS Backup. Which AWS service should they use to orchestrate the HANA backup?

Accepted Answer

AWS Backup. AWS Backup natively supports SAP HANA databases by integrating with the SAP HANA Backint agent, which allows you to define backup policies, retention rules, and cross-region copy directly from the AWS Backup console. This eliminates the need for custom scripting or manual orchestration, making it the correct service for automating HANA backups on AWS.

Answer

AWS Lambda

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Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager

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AWS Systems Manager

Question 14

A company is setting up a disaster recovery (DR) site for SAP on AWS. They need to replicate the SAP HANA database to another region. Which AWS service is BEST suited for this?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native, SAP-supported mechanism for replicating HANA databases asynchronously or synchronously across regions. It replicates at the database level using log shipping and is the only option that maintains full SAP HANA consistency, transaction integrity, and support for takeover in a DR scenario.

Answer

AWS Backup cross-region copy

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AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication

Question 15

An SAP administrator wants to ensure that the SAP application server can communicate with the HANA database using the private IP address within the same VPC. What configuration is necessary?

Accepted Answer

Configure a security group rule allowing traffic on the HANA database port from the application server's security group.. Within the same VPC, AWS resources can communicate using private IP addresses without internet or VPN connectivity. The key requirement is that the security group attached to the HANA database must allow inbound traffic on the HANA database port (typically 31517 or 30015 for HANA) from the security group associated with the SAP application server. This ensures that only traffic originating from the application server is permitted, maintaining security while enabling private IP communication.

Answer

Attach an Internet Gateway to the VPC.

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Set up a NAT Gateway for the database subnet.

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Establish a VPN connection to the on-premises network.