PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Test 9 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An organization runs SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a single-host HANA database on an EC2 instance. The company wants to implement high availability (HA) for the HANA database within the same AWS Region. The HA solution must ensure automatic failover with minimal data loss. The SAP application servers are already distributed across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). The database administrator proposes using SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with synchronous replication. However, the network latency between the primary and secondary HANA instances is consistently between 2 ms and 4 ms. What should the administrator do to ensure that the HA solution meets the requirements?

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

Accepted Answer

Deploy both HANA instances in the same Availability Zone to reduce network latency.. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) with synchronous mode requires network latency typically below 1 ms to avoid transaction commit delays and replication timeouts. With consistent 2–4 ms latency, synchronous replication would cause unacceptable performance degradation and potential replication failures. Deploying both HANA instances in the same Availability Zone (AZ) reduces latency to sub-millisecond levels, enabling synchronous replication to meet the automatic failover and minimal data loss requirements.

Answer

Increase the HANA replication timeout value to accommodate the latency.

Answer

Use asynchronous replication instead and accept the risk of data loss.

Answer

Continue with synchronous replication; the latency is acceptable for HA.

Question 2

An organization runs SAP ERP on AWS with an SAP HANA database. The database is deployed on an EC2 instance with EBS storage. The company is planning to upgrade the HANA database from version 2.0 to 2.0 SPS 05. The upgrade process requires a system copy to a new instance. The company wants to minimize the downtime during the upgrade and ensure that the existing system remains available until the new system is ready. The current HANA instance has 1 TB of data. The company has a test environment that can be used for the upgrade. Which approach should the company take to minimize downtime?

Accepted Answer

Set up SAP HANA System Replication from the production instance to a new instance. Perform the upgrade on the replica. Once upgraded, perform a takeover to make the new instance the primary.. SAP HANA System Replication allows you to replicate data from the production instance to a new instance in near real-time. You can then perform the upgrade on the replica while the production system remains fully available. Once the upgrade is complete and validated, a takeover operation promotes the replica to primary, minimizing downtime to just the seconds required for the takeover and DNS switch.

Answer

Use SAP HANA Studio to export the production database to a file, import it into a new instance, and upgrade. Then redirect users to the new instance.

Answer

Perform the upgrade directly on the production HANA instance during a maintenance window.

Answer

Take a full backup of the production HANA database, restore it to a new instance, and perform the upgrade on the new instance. Then switch DNS to the new instance.

Question 3

A company runs SAP on AWS and wants to implement a high-availability (HA) solution for SAP Central Services (ASCS/ERS) using Amazon EC2 instances. Which AWS service is essential for managing the virtual IP address (VIP) required for the HA cluster?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Route 53. Amazon Route 53 is essential for managing the virtual IP address (VIP) required for the SAP Central Services (ASCS/ERS) HA cluster because it provides DNS-based failover. When the active ASCS instance fails, the HA cluster updates a Route 53 DNS record to point to the standby instance's IP address, effectively migrating the VIP. This allows clients to reconnect using the same DNS name without needing an elastic IP or a network-level VIP, which is not natively supported in AWS for this use case.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Answer

AWS WAF

Answer

Application Load Balancer

Question 4

A company is planning to migrate an SAP HANA database to AWS. They need to ensure that the instance type supports the required amount of memory and that the storage can handle high IOPS. Which AWS service can help determine the appropriate instance type and storage configuration based on the SAP workload requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator. AWS Pricing Calculator is the correct choice because it allows you to input specific SAP HANA workload requirements, such as memory size and expected IOPS, and then outputs a list of compatible EC2 instance types (e.g., x1e.32xlarge or u-6tb1.metal) and corresponding EBS or instance store configurations. It directly maps SAP-certified instance families and storage options to the required performance metrics, ensuring compliance with SAP's memory and IOPS guidelines.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

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AWS Config

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 5

A company runs SAP NetWeaver on AWS. The system uses a shared file system for transport files via Amazon EFS. Recently, the transport directory performance has degraded. Which configuration change is most likely to improve the I/O performance for the transport directory?

Accepted Answer

Enable EFS performance mode with Max I/O.. Enabling EFS Max I/O performance mode provides higher throughput and IOPS for workloads with high I/O demands, such as SAP transport directories. Max I/O mode scales horizontally by distributing file data across multiple servers, which improves performance for parallel access patterns common in SAP transport operations.

Answer

Migrate the transport directory to an Amazon EBS volume.

Answer

Use Amazon S3 with a mount point.

Answer

Use EFS with Bursting Throughput mode.

Question 6

During a migration of an SAP system to AWS, the administrator notices that the SAP application servers are experiencing high network latency when communicating with the SAP HANA database. The application and database servers are in different VPCs connected via VPC peering. Which design change would most effectively reduce the latency?

Accepted Answer

Place the application and database servers in the same subnet.. Placing the SAP application servers and the SAP HANA database in the same subnet eliminates the need for traffic to traverse a VPC peering connection, which introduces additional network hops and potential latency. In a single subnet, all traffic stays within the same VPC and uses the local network infrastructure, providing the lowest possible latency for SAP HANA communication, which is critical for performance.

Answer

Set up an AWS Direct Connect connection.

Answer

Enable Enhanced Networking on the EC2 instances.

Answer

Increase the bandwidth of the VPC peering connection.

Question 7

An SAP administrator created the IAM policy shown in the exhibit to allow a monitoring tool to start and stop SAP application servers tagged with Environment=Production. When testing the policy, the tool fails to start an instance. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The policy does not allow starting instances that are already running.. The policy uses a condition that checks if the instance is already running (`ec2:InstanceState/Name` equals `running`). The `ec2:StartInstances` action is only allowed when the instance is in the `running` state, but starting an instance requires it to be in the `stopped` state. This mismatch causes the start action to fail for production-tagged instances.

Answer

The policy requires the instance to be stopped before starting.

Answer

The policy is missing the ec2:DescribeInstances action.

Answer

The resource ARN does not match the instance ID.

Question 8

An SAP administrator runs the AWS CLI command shown in the exhibit for an EC2 instance used as an SAP HANA database server. The server has two EBS volumes attached: a root volume (/dev/xvda) and a data volume (/dev/sdf). Based on the output, what will happen when the instance is terminated?

Accepted Answer

The root volume will be deleted, and the data volume will persist.. The AWS CLI command `describe-instances` output shows that the root volume (`/dev/xvda`) has `DeleteOnTermination` set to `true` (default), while the data volume (`/dev/sdf`) has `DeleteOnTermination` set to `false`. When the EC2 instance is terminated, only volumes with `DeleteOnTermination=true` are automatically deleted. Therefore, the root volume will be deleted, and the data volume will persist as an unattached EBS volume in the same Availability Zone.

Answer

The instance cannot be terminated because DeleteOnTermination is set inconsistently.

Answer

Both volumes will be deleted.

Answer

Both volumes will persist.

Question 9

An administrator is reviewing a CloudFormation template to deploy an SAP ASCS instance. The template snippet is shown in the exhibit. What is a potential issue with this configuration for a production deployment?

Accepted Answer

The instance type m5.large is not certified for SAP ASCS.. The m5.large instance type is not certified for SAP ASCS on AWS. SAP requires specific instance types that have passed SAP's certification tests for high-availability and performance requirements of the ASCS (ABAP Central Services) role. Using an uncertified instance type can lead to unsupported configurations, potential performance issues, and lack of SAP support.

Answer

The AMI ID is not specified correctly.

Answer

The security group is not defined in the template.

Answer

The tags are not sufficient for SAP discovery.

Question 10

An architect is designing a disaster recovery (DR) solution for an SAP ERP system on AWS. The primary site is in us-east-1 and the DR site is in us-west-2. The SAP application uses an Oracle database. The RTO is 4 hours and RPO is 1 hour. Which solution meets these requirements with the least operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Configure AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication from the primary Oracle database to a standby in us-west-2. AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication provides continuous change data capture (CDC) from the primary Oracle database to a standby in us-west-2, meeting the 1-hour RPO and 4-hour RTO with minimal operational overhead. DMS handles schema conversion, replication, and failover without requiring manual intervention or complex Oracle licensing, making it the most efficient choice for cross-region DR.

Answer

Set up Oracle Active Data Guard between the primary and DR regions

Answer

Take daily EBS snapshots of the database volumes and copy them to us-west-2, then restore using the snapshots

Answer

Use AWS Backup to copy EC2 AMIs and RDS snapshots to us-west-2 every hour

Question 11

A company plans to migrate its SAP ERP system to AWS. The system currently runs on IBM Db2 and uses a large amount of memory. The architect needs to choose an EC2 instance type that is SAP certified and provides high memory. Which instance family should the architect select?

Accepted Answer

x1e.32xlarge. The x1e.32xlarge instance is SAP-certified for high-memory workloads and is specifically designed for large in-memory databases like IBM Db2. It offers up to 3,904 GiB of memory, making it suitable for SAP ERP systems that require a large memory footprint. Other instance families like C5, R5, and I3 are not SAP-certified for high-memory SAP workloads or lack the necessary memory capacity.

Answer

c5.18xlarge

Answer

r5.24xlarge

Answer

i3.16xlarge

Question 12

An SAP Basis administrator notices that the SAP application is running slowly during peak hours. The system is deployed on a single r5.8xlarge instance with 256 GiB of memory. CloudWatch metrics show high CPU utilization but moderate memory usage. Which action should the architect take to improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the instance type to c5.9xlarge. The high CPU utilization with moderate memory usage indicates a compute-bound workload, not a memory-bound one. Changing from an r5.8xlarge (32 vCPUs, 256 GiB memory) to a c5.9xlarge (36 vCPUs, 72 GiB memory) provides more vCPUs and a better compute-to-memory ratio, directly addressing the CPU bottleneck. This aligns with SAP's recommendation to match instance types to workload characteristics, where compute-optimized instances are suitable for CPU-intensive SAP applications.

Answer

Increase the instance memory by selecting r5.12xlarge

Answer

Increase the size of the EBS root volume

Answer

Add Provisioned IOPS to the EBS volumes

Question 13

A company runs SAP Business Suite on AWS with an Oracle database. The database is stored on Amazon EBS volumes. The architect wants to implement a backup strategy that meets a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 2 hours. Which solution is the most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Take EBS snapshots of the database volumes every 15 minutes and store them in Amazon S3. The most cost-effective because EBS snapshots are incremental, storing only changed blocks, and can be automated via Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager to meet a 15-minute RPO. Restoring from an EBS snapshot to a new volume typically completes within minutes, easily satisfying the 2-hour RTO, and there are no ongoing compute costs for a standby instance or replication server.

Answer

Maintain a standby Oracle database in another Availability Zone using Oracle Data Guard

Answer

Use Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to back up to Amazon S3 every 15 minutes

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication to a separate EC2 instance

Question 14

An architect is designing a network topology for an SAP system on AWS. The SAP application servers must be placed in private subnets, and the web dispatchers must be accessible from the internet. Which configuration should the architect use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Place the web dispatchers in public subnets, the application servers in private subnets, and use a Network Load Balancer in front of the web dispatchers. Web dispatchers need direct internet accessibility, which is achieved by placing them in public subnets with an Internet Gateway route. The SAP application servers must remain in private subnets for security, and a Network Load Balancer (NLB) in front of the web dispatchers provides layer 4 load balancing and health checks without exposing the dispatchers' IPs directly, while preserving client IP for logging and security.

Answer

Place all SAP servers in public subnets and use security groups to restrict access

Answer

Place the web dispatchers in private subnets and use a NAT Gateway for internet access

Answer

Place all servers in private subnets and use an Application Load Balancer for internet access

Question 15

An architect is designing a storage solution for an SAP Business Warehouse (BW) system on AWS. The system requires high throughput for data extraction and transformation. The existing on-premises system uses SAN storage with 10,000 IOPS. Which Amazon EBS volume type should the architect choose to meet or exceed this performance at the lowest cost?

Accepted Answer

gp3 with 10,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput. Amazon EBS gp3 volumes can provision up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s throughput independently, making them suitable for SAP BW workloads requiring 10,000 IOPS. gp3 offers a lower cost than io1 because it includes a baseline performance (3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s) and only charges for additional provisioned IOPS and throughput, whereas io1 charges for every provisioned IOPS. This makes gp3 the most cost-effective choice to meet or exceed the required 10,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput.

Answer

sc1 with 10,000 IOPS

Answer

io1 with 10,000 Provisioned IOPS

Answer

st1 with 10,000 IOPS