PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 8 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS with Oracle Database. The system is experiencing high read latency on the database server. The current storage configuration uses EBS gp2 volumes. Which change would most effectively reduce read latency?

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

Accepted Answer

Migrate to io2 Block Express volumes with provisioned IOPS.. Io2 Block Express volumes provide consistent, high-performance IOPS with sub-millisecond latency, which directly addresses the high read latency issue. Unlike gp2, which relies on burst credits and has variable performance, io2 Block Express delivers provisioned IOPS up to 256,000 per volume, making it ideal for latency-sensitive SAP workloads with Oracle Database.

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Increase the size of the EBS gp2 volumes to increase baseline IOPS.

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Configure a RAID 0 stripe across multiple EBS volumes.

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Use EBS st1 volumes for better throughput.

Question 2

A company is designing an SAP HANA disaster recovery (DR) solution on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1, and the DR site is in us-west-2. The RPO must be less than 15 minutes, and the RTO must be less than 2 hours. Which replication strategy meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA system replication with synchronous mode and pre-provisioned DR instances.. SAP HANA system replication with synchronous mode ensures that every committed transaction is replicated to the DR site before acknowledgment, meeting the <15-minute RPO. Pre-provisioned DR instances in us-west-2 allow rapid failover, enabling the <2-hour RTO by eliminating the need to provision infrastructure during recovery.

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SAP HANA log shipping to an S3 bucket in the DR region.

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S3 cross-region replication for HANA data files.

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EBS snapshot replication to the DR region every 15 minutes.

Question 3

An SAP system on AWS uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to multiple SAP Web Dispatchers. The system is experiencing intermittent session drops. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The ALB is not configured for sticky sessions.. The ALB operates at Layer 7 and, by default, distributes each request independently across healthy targets. SAP Web Dispatchers maintain user session state (e.g., logon tickets, application context) locally. Without sticky sessions (session affinity) enabled on the ALB, subsequent requests from the same user can be routed to a different Web Dispatcher, causing the new dispatcher to lack the session context and dropping the user's session. Enabling stickiness based on the ALB-generated cookie ensures all requests from a session are sent to the same Web Dispatcher, preventing these intermittent drops.

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The ALB deletion protection is enabled.

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The ALB health check interval is too short.

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Cross-zone load balancing is not enabled on the ALB.

Question 4

A company is running SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a scale-out HANA configuration. The system is experiencing performance degradation during peak hours. Monitoring shows high network throughput on the HANA nodes. Which EC2 instance family is best suited to mitigate this?

Accepted Answer

x2iedn instances with high network bandwidth.. The x2iedn instances are specifically designed for SAP HANA scale-out configurations, offering high memory per vCPU and dedicated high network bandwidth via the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA). In a scale-out HANA setup, nodes communicate intensively over the network for data synchronization and shared storage access, so high network throughput directly mitigates the performance degradation during peak hours.

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c5 instances with placement groups.

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r5 instances with enhanced networking.

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m5 instances with EBS optimization.

Question 5

A company wants to automate the installation of SAP software on AWS using AWS CloudFormation. Which service is most appropriate to execute the SAP installation scripts?

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager Run Command.. AWS Systems Manager Run Command is the most appropriate service because it can execute scripts (including SAP installation scripts) on EC2 instances without requiring SSH or RDP access, and it integrates with CloudFormation via custom resources or the AWS::SSM::Document resource. This allows you to run complex, long-running installation commands that are typical for SAP software, which Lambda functions cannot handle due to time limits.

Answer

AWS CodeDeploy.

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AWS Lambda functions triggered by CloudFormation.

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AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate.

Question 6

An SAP HANA database on AWS is using EBS io2 volumes. The company wants to monitor the read and write latency of the database volumes. Which CloudWatch metrics should be used?

Accepted Answer

VolumeReadLatency and VolumeWriteLatency.. CloudWatch provides the `VolumeReadLatency` and `VolumeWriteLatency` metrics specifically to monitor the average time (in seconds) for read and write I/O operations on EBS volumes. For SAP HANA on io2 volumes, these metrics directly reflect storage performance and are critical for detecting latency issues that could impact database throughput and transaction response times.

Answer

VolumeIdleTime and VolumeTotalReadTime.

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VolumeThroughputPercentage and VolumeConsumedReadWriteOps.

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VolumeQueueLength and VolumeThroughput.

Question 7

Which TWO configurations are required for a high-availability SAP HANA deployment on AWS using Pacemaker? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

STONITH fencing configured for the cluster nodes.. STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head) fencing is required in a Pacemaker cluster to ensure that a failed or unresponsive node is forcefully isolated before resources are failed over. Without STONITH, a split-brain scenario can occur where both nodes attempt to act as the primary, leading to data corruption. On AWS, STONITH is typically implemented using the AWS fence agent (fence_aws) which uses API calls to stop or reboot the instance.

Answer

Placement groups in separate Availability Zones for the cluster nodes.

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EBS volumes with multi-attach enabled for shared storage.

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An AWS Classic Load Balancer to route traffic to the active node.

Question 8

Which THREE security best practices should be implemented for SAP systems on AWS? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use security groups to restrict inbound and outbound traffic to SAP systems.. Security groups act as a virtual firewall for EC2 instances, controlling inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. For SAP systems, this is critical to restrict access to only necessary ports (e.g., 3200 for SAP Application Server, 36xx for SAProuter, 443 for HTTPS) and trusted IP ranges, reducing the attack surface. Unlike network ACLs, security groups are stateful, meaning return traffic is automatically allowed, simplifying rule management for SAP communication flows.

Answer

Disable SSH key pair access and use only password authentication.

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Deploy all SAP systems in a single VPC for simplified management.

Question 9

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor the performance of SAP NetWeaver application servers? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Systems Manager. AWS Systems Manager is correct because it provides the Agent-based infrastructure management capabilities needed to monitor SAP NetWeaver application servers. Specifically, Systems Manager Inventory can collect OS-level metrics like CPU, memory, and disk usage from EC2 instances running SAP, and its Run Command or State Manager can execute custom scripts to gather SAP-specific performance data (e.g., from ST03 or ST06 transactions) without requiring direct SSH access.

Answer

AWS CloudTrail

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AWS Trusted Advisor

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AWS X-Ray

Question 10

A company is migrating its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system requires high availability for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) instance. Which AWS architecture should be used to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Use a multi-AZ deployment with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP as a shared file system and place ASCS on two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones with an Elastic IP address.. SAP ASCS requires a highly available shared file system and a floating IP address for failover. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides a highly available, NFS-based shared file system that supports the SAP transport and profile directories across Availability Zones. Placing two EC2 instances in different AZs with an Elastic IP address allows the ASCS instance to be failed over manually or via a cluster manager, meeting the high availability requirement.

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Use Amazon S3 to store the ASCS configuration and launch a single EC2 instance with an Auto Scaling group.

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Deploy ASCS on a single EC2 instance in one Availability Zone with an EBS volume snapshot for recovery.

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Use Amazon RDS for SAP Central Services running in a Multi-AZ configuration.

Question 11

An SAP administrator needs to back up the SAP HANA database daily to Amazon S3 using the Backint agent. What is the prerequisite for this integration?

Accepted Answer

Install the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) on the HANA host.. The AWS Backint agent for SAP HANA requires the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) to be installed on the HANA host. The Backint agent uses SSM Agent to securely communicate with AWS Systems Manager, which orchestrates the backup workflow and enables the agent to write backup data directly to Amazon S3. Without the SSM Agent, the Backint agent cannot authenticate or transfer data to S3, making it a mandatory prerequisite.

Answer

Create a backup vault in AWS Backup.

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Mount an Amazon EFS file system to the HANA host for backup storage.

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Configure AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate data to S3.

Question 12

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1 and the DR site is in us-west-2. The SAP HANA database is 2 TB and requires Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) to an EC2 instance in us-west-2 with log replication in sync mode.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with synchronous log replication meets the RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 4 hours because it continuously replicates transaction logs to the DR site in us-west-2, ensuring near-zero data loss. In sync mode, the primary waits for the secondary to acknowledge log writes, which keeps the DR database consistent and ready for takeover within minutes, well under the 4-hour RTO. This is the only option that provides continuous, database-level replication with the required recovery objectives.

Answer

Use AWS S3 Cross-Region Replication to copy database backups every 15 minutes.

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Take EBS snapshots of the HANA data volume every hour and copy them to us-west-2.

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Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to continuously replicate changes to a HANA instance in us-west-2.

Question 13

A company runs SAP ERP 6.0 on an Oracle database on EC2. The system is experiencing high CPU usage on the database server during peak hours. Analysis shows that the CPU is consumed by log writes. Which configuration change can reduce CPU usage?

Accepted Answer

Increase the Oracle log buffer size to reduce the number of log write operations.. High CPU usage from log writes indicates that the database is spending excessive CPU cycles on writing redo log entries to disk. Increasing the Oracle log buffer size reduces the frequency of log write operations by allowing more redo data to accumulate before a write is triggered, thereby lowering CPU overhead. This directly addresses the root cause without changing storage or compute capacity.

Answer

Disable archiving of redo logs.

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Switch from EBS gp3 to io2 Block Express volumes.

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Upgrade to a larger EC2 instance type with more vCPUs.

Question 14

An SAP administrator wants to monitor the CPU utilization of SAP application servers using Amazon CloudWatch. What is the minimum configuration required?

Accepted Answer

Install and configure the AWS CloudWatch Agent on each SAP application server.. The AWS CloudWatch Agent must be installed and configured on each SAP application server to collect custom metrics like CPU utilization at the granularity and frequency required for SAP monitoring. CloudWatch by default only provides basic EC2 metrics (every 5 minutes) and cannot capture OS-level or application-level CPU utilization without the agent. The agent sends metrics via the CloudWatch PutMetricData API, enabling detailed monitoring of SAP-specific performance counters.

Answer

Set up an AWS Lambda function to query EC2 metrics from the CloudWatch API.

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Configure SAP Solution Manager to export metrics to CloudWatch.

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Enable EC2 detailed monitoring from the AWS Management Console.

Question 15

A company is planning to run SAP Business Suite on AWS with an Oracle database. The database requires a shared file system for Oracle Grid Infrastructure (GI). Which AWS storage service should be used?

Accepted Answer

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP.. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides a fully managed, shared file system that supports the NFS and SMB protocols required by Oracle Grid Infrastructure (GI) for clusterware and Oracle RAC. It offers high availability, consistent performance, and the ability to present a single namespace across multiple Availability Zones, which is essential for Oracle GI's shared-storage architecture.

Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS).

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Amazon S3 with a file gateway.

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Multiple Amazon EBS volumes with a cluster-aware file system.