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

Question 1

A company is migrating its SAP Business Warehouse (BW) system to AWS. The source system runs on an on-premises IBM AIX server with an Oracle database. The target AWS environment will use SAP HANA as the database. The migration tool is SAP Software Provisioning Manager (SWPM). The company has a requirement to minimize downtime during the migration. The SAP BW system has 5 TB of data. The network bandwidth between on-premises and AWS is 1 Gbps. The migration team plans to use AWS Direct Connect for the data transfer. They estimate that the initial data load will take approximately 12 hours. However, the cutover window is limited to 8 hours. What should the migration team do to meet the cutover window?

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

Accepted Answer

Use SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) to replicate data in real-time after the initial load, and then perform a final delta sync during the cutover window.. SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) can replicate data in near real-time from the source Oracle database to the target SAP HANA using trigger-based replication. After the initial 12-hour data load is completed before the cutover window, SLT captures ongoing changes and applies them during the final delta sync within the 8-hour cutover window, minimizing downtime. This approach decouples the lengthy initial load from the limited cutover period, meeting the requirement.

Answer

Use AWS DataSync to accelerate the data transfer and then import into HANA.

Answer

Perform a HANA system replication from the source to the target after the initial load.

Answer

Request a higher bandwidth Direct Connect connection to reduce the initial load time to under 8 hours.

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 is 15 minutes, and the RTO is 2 hours. Which AWS service should be used for replicating the SAP HANA database to the DR site?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication with log shipping using Amazon S3 or direct VPN connection.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) is the native, SAP-supported mechanism for real-time database replication, capable of achieving sub-minute RPOs by continuously shipping log entries to a secondary system. When combined with a direct VPN connection or Amazon S3 as a log shipping target, it meets the 15-minute RPO and 2-hour RTO requirements for disaster recovery across AWS regions. This is the only option that provides synchronous or near-synchronous replication of the HANA database itself, not just backups or snapshots.

Answer

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication for database backup files.

Answer

Amazon EBS snapshots replicated to us-west-2 via Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication.

Question 3

A company is migrating an SAP ERP system to AWS and wants to use SAP HANA as the database. The current on-premises database is 4 TB. Which EC2 instance type is optimized for SAP HANA workloads and provides sufficient memory?

Accepted Answer

x1e.32xlarge. The x1e.32xlarge instance is specifically optimized for SAP HANA workloads, offering 3,904 GiB of memory, which is sufficient for a 4 TB SAP HANA database when considering the 1:5 memory-to-data ratio required by SAP (4 TB data requires approximately 800 GB memory, but the x1e.32xlarge provides ample headroom for growth and workload peaks). It also supports SAP HANA certified instance types and provides high network and EBS throughput essential for HANA's performance demands.

Answer

r5.24xlarge

Answer

m5.24xlarge

Answer

c5.18xlarge

Question 4

An SAP system on AWS uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to multiple SAP application servers. The ALB is configured with a TCP listener. Users report that some sessions are terminated unexpectedly. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The ALB idle timeout setting is shorter than the SAP session timeout.. The ALB's idle timeout setting controls how long the load balancer keeps a connection open without data transfer. If this timeout is shorter than the SAP session timeout, the ALB will close the connection prematurely, causing the user's session to be terminated unexpectedly. This is a common mismatch when long-running SAP transactions or background jobs do not send data within the ALB's idle timeout window.

Answer

The ALB is not configured with SSL termination.

Answer

The target group health check interval is set too low.

Answer

The ALB is configured with cross-zone load balancing disabled.

Question 5

A company is planning to deploy SAP S/4HANA on AWS with high availability. Which action should be taken to achieve high availability for the SAP Central Services (ASCS/ERS) instance?

Accepted Answer

Deploy ASCS and ERS in different Availability Zones.. The correct action is to deploy ASCS and ERS in different Availability Zones (Option D). This ensures that if one AZ fails, the instance can fail over to the other AZ, providing high availability. Option E (using a cluster placement group) is incorrect because cluster placement groups are confined to a single AZ and cannot span multiple AZs, making them incompatible with the cross-AZ requirement. Options A, B, and C all violate HA principles by placing both instances in the same AZ or same instance. Therefore, only Option D is a valid action for achieving high availability.

Answer

Deploy ASCS and ERS in the same Availability Zone.

Answer

Run both ASCS and ERS on the same EC2 instance.

Answer

Place ASCS and ERS in the same subnet.

Answer

Use a cluster placement group for ASCS and ERS instances.

Question 6

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS and wants to encrypt the database at rest. Which THREE options are available to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Use AWS KMS with a custom key store to manage encryption keys.. Option B is correct because AWS KMS, including a custom key store backed by AWS CloudHSM, can generate and manage the customer master keys used to encrypt the Amazon EBS volumes that hold SAP HANA data, giving control over key lifecycle and rotation. Option C is correct because SAP HANA provides native database encryption (via the hdbnsutil -enableEncryption command and the SAP HANA secure store) that encrypts data and log volumes at the application layer, independent of the underlying storage. Option E is correct because enabling Amazon EBS encryption on all volumes attached to the HANA instance encrypts data at rest on the EBS layer using AES-256 with KMS-managed keys, which is the standard AWS mechanism for encrypting SAP HANA storage. Option A is not applicable because SAP HANA is not a supported engine on Amazon RDS, so RDS encryption cannot be used for it. Option D does not belong because Amazon S3 server-side encryption protects objects stored in S3 buckets, not the block-level database files on the HANA instance's EBS volumes.

Answer

Use Amazon RDS encryption for the SAP HANA database.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 server-side encryption for database files.

Question 7

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a production system in us-east-1 and a disaster recovery (DR) system in us-west-2. The DR system is a standby HANA system using HANA System Replication (HSR) with asynchronous replication. The primary system has a memory of 2 TB and uses x1e.16xlarge instances. The DR system uses identical instance types. Recently, the network latency between the primary and DR sites increased from 50 ms to 150 ms due to a change in the network path. The SAP Basis team notices that the replication lag has increased significantly, and the DR system is now behind by several minutes. The RPO requirement is 30 seconds. The team must resolve the issue without changing the DR site location or the bandwidth. Which action should the team take to meet the RPO?

Accepted Answer

Configure HSR to use delta_datashipping instead of log shipping.. HANA System Replication (HSR) can be configured to use delta_datashipping, which sends only the changed data blocks rather than full redo logs. This reduces the amount of data transferred per replication cycle, making it more resilient to increased network latency. With 150 ms latency, log shipping may fail to meet the 30-second RPO, but delta_datashipping can keep the DR system within the required lag by minimizing per-message payload size.

Answer

Increase the AWS Direct Connect bandwidth between the two regions.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 cross-region replication for the HANA log backups.

Answer

Change HSR to synchronous replication mode.

Question 8

A company is planning to migrate its SAP HANA workload to AWS. The system requires high network throughput and low latency between application and database servers. Which AWS networking feature should be used to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Place the instances in a Cluster Placement Group.. A Cluster Placement Group (CPG) is a logical grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone that provides low-latency, high-throughput network connectivity by placing them in close physical proximity. For SAP HANA workloads requiring consistent high network throughput and low latency between application and database servers, a CPG ensures that all instances are co-located, minimizing network hops and jitter. This is the correct choice because it directly addresses the need for low-latency, high-bandwidth communication between tightly coupled components.

Answer

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

Answer

Use Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for network connectivity.

Answer

Use Enhanced Networking on all instances.

Question 9

A company runs SAP ECC on AWS with a multi-ASCS architecture for high availability. During a failover test, the secondary ASCS instance does not take over. The cluster logs indicate that the 'aws-cluster' resource agent failed to release the Elastic IP. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The Elastic IP is associated with the primary private IP address of the ENI.. In a multi-ASCS SAP cluster on AWS, the 'aws-cluster' resource agent manages Elastic IP (EIP) failover by disassociating the EIP from the primary instance and associating it with the secondary instance. If the EIP is associated with the primary private IP address of the Elastic Network Interface (ENI) rather than the ENI itself, the resource agent cannot release it because the association is at the IP level, not the ENI level. This prevents the secondary ASCS instance from acquiring the EIP, causing the failover to fail.

Answer

The Elastic IP is in a different Availability Zone than the secondary ASCS instance.

Answer

The cluster is using a NAT Gateway for outbound traffic, conflicting with the Elastic IP.

Answer

The IAM role assigned to the instances does not have permission to release the Elastic IP.

Question 10

Which TWO are best practices for designing high availability for SAP NetWeaver on AWS? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy SAP ASCS and PAS instances in separate Availability Zones.. Option B is correct because placing the SAP ASCS (ABAP SAP Central Services) and PAS (Primary Application Server) in separate Availability Zones protects the SAP system from a single-AZ failure, which is a fundamental high-availability design principle on AWS; the ASCS is the single point of failure for the SAP system, so isolating it from the PAS across AZs improves resilience. Option E is correct because an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) distributing traffic across multiple Web Dispatchers provides horizontal scaling and fault tolerance for the SAP Web Dispatcher tier, ensuring that if one Web Dispatcher or its AZ fails, traffic is routed to healthy instances. Option A is not a best practice because T2/T3 burstable instances have variable CPU performance with burst credits and are not recommended for production SAP NetWeaver workloads requiring consistent, high-performance compute. Option C is not a best practice because EBS Multi-Attach is limited to io1/io2 volumes in a single AZ and is not a supported or suitable HA mechanism for SAP application data, which typically requires shared storage solutions like EFS or clustered file systems. Option D is not a best practice because multiple Application Load Balancers in a failover configuration add unnecessary complexity; ALBs are inherently highly available across AZs, and SAP Web Dispatcher traffic is better handled by a single ELB or Network Load Balancer.

Answer

Use T2 or T3 burstable instances for cost savings.

Answer

Use EBS Multi-Attach volumes for the SAP application data.

Answer

Configure multiple Application Load Balancers in a failover configuration.

Question 11

A company runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a single-instance deployment. The database is hosted on an r5.8xlarge instance with 5000 provisioned IOPS EBS volumes. Recently, the system experienced a performance degradation during peak hours. CloudWatch metrics show that the EBS volume read latency is consistently above 10 ms, and the queue length is frequently peaking at 20. The instance is in the same Availability Zone as the EBS volumes. What should the administrator do to resolve the performance issue?

Accepted Answer

Increase the provisioned IOPS on the EBS volumes to 10000.. The CloudWatch metrics show high read latency (>10 ms) and a queue length peaking at 20, which indicates that the EBS volume is throttling due to insufficient IOPS for the workload. Increasing provisioned IOPS from 5000 to 10000 directly addresses the bottleneck by allowing more I/O operations per second, reducing queue depth and latency. Since the instance and volumes are in the same Availability Zone, network latency is not a factor, and instance store volumes are ephemeral and unsuitable for persistent SAP HANA data.

Answer

Move the instance to a different Availability Zone to reduce network latency.

Answer

Move the database to an instance with instance store volumes for better performance.

Answer

Migrate the EBS volumes to gp3 volume type with baseline performance.

Question 12

An organization has a production SAP ERP system on AWS with a multi-node SAP HANA scale-out configuration. The system uses a cluster placement group for low latency. During a maintenance window, the administrator needs to stop and start all instances. After restart, the HANA nodes cannot communicate with each other. The cluster placement group is still intact, but the private IP addresses have changed. The HANA topology relies on hostnames resolved via /etc/hosts. What is the MOST likely cause and solution?

Accepted Answer

The private IP addresses changed, but /etc/hosts still has the old IPs. Update /etc/hosts with the new IPs or use Elastic IPs.. When EC2 instances in a cluster placement group are stopped and started, the private IP addresses can change unless they are configured with a primary Elastic Network Interface (ENI) or Elastic IP. Since the SAP HANA scale-out topology relies on hostnames resolved via /etc/hosts, the old IPs in that file become stale after the restart, breaking inter-node communication. Updating /etc/hosts with the new private IPs or assigning Elastic IPs to preserve the addresses resolves the issue.

Answer

The EBS volumes were detached during stop. Reattach the volumes.

Answer

The security group rules were reset. Reapply the security group rules.

Answer

The cluster placement group was removed during stop/start. Recreate the placement group.

Question 13

A company runs SAP HANA on AWS with a multi-AZ deployment using HANA System Replication (HSR). The primary site is in us-east-1a and the secondary in us-east-1b. Each site has an ASCS and PAS. The HANA database uses a virtual IP address managed by a Route 53 health check with a failover routing policy. During a recent AZ failure in us-east-1a, the automatic failover to the secondary site took over 15 minutes. The recovery time objective (RTO) is 5 minutes. Analysis shows that the Route 53 health check failed but the failover did not trigger quickly because the DNS TTL was set to 300 seconds. What changes should be made to meet the RTO?

Accepted Answer

Reduce the DNS TTL to 60 seconds and use a weighted routing policy with health checks.. Reducing the DNS TTL to 60 seconds ensures that DNS resolvers cache the failover record for a shorter duration, allowing the Route 53 failover routing policy to propagate the new IP address more quickly after a health check failure. Combined with a weighted routing policy and health checks, this enables failover within the 5-minute RTO by minimizing DNS propagation delay, which was the bottleneck at 300 seconds.

Answer

Increase the DNS TTL to 600 seconds to ensure stability.

Answer

Replace Route 53 with an Application Load Balancer for the virtual IP.

Answer

Remove the health check and use a simple routing policy with a low TTL.

Question 14

An organization is migrating its SAP ECC system to AWS. The system currently uses a physical IBM Db2 database. The company wants to minimize licensing costs and management overhead after migration. The SAP system will be deployed on Amazon EC2. Which database option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Migrate to SAP ASE (Sybase) on EC2.. SAP ASE (Sybase) is the recommended database for SAP workloads on AWS when minimizing licensing costs and management overhead is a priority. Unlike IBM Db2 or Oracle, SAP ASE has lower licensing fees and is fully supported by SAP for production use on EC2. It also avoids the complexity and higher cost of migrating to SAP HANA, which is unnecessary for an existing SAP ECC system that does not require in-memory capabilities.

Answer

Continue using IBM Db2 on EC2 to avoid migration complexity.

Answer

Migrate to SAP HANA on EC2 to gain in-memory benefits.

Answer

Migrate to Oracle Database on Amazon RDS.

Question 15

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for its SAP environment on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1, and the DR site must be in us-west-2. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 4 hours. Which TWO AWS services should be used to meet these objectives?

Accepted Answer

SAP HANA System Replication configured with asynchronous replication to a HANA instance in us-west-2.. Option C is correct because SAP HANA System Replication in asynchronous mode can achieve an RPO of 15 minutes or better by continuously shipping redo log changes to a standby HANA instance in us-west-2, and the standby can be brought online within the 4-hour RTO. Option D is correct because AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery continuously replicates source servers (including SAP application and database servers) at the block level to a staging area in us-west-2, supporting sub-second to minute-level RPOs and rapid recovery within the 4-hour RTO. Option A is not sufficient by itself because Route 53 health checks only redirect DNS traffic; they do not replicate data or provide the RPO/RTO capability. Option B is not sufficient because Auto Scaling groups only launch EC2 instances and do not replicate SAP data or ensure data consistency. Option E is not appropriate because AWS Backup snapshot copies every 15 minutes cannot reliably meet a 15-minute RPO and restoring EBS snapshots plus rebuilding SAP would likely exceed the 4-hour RTO.

Answer

Amazon Route 53 health checks to fail over DNS to the DR site.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups to launch instances in us-west-2 on failover.

Answer

AWS Backup to copy EBS snapshots to us-west-2 every 15 minutes.