PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is designing a backup strategy for SAP HANA on AWS. The HANA database is 2 TB in size. The company requires daily full backups and hourly incremental backups. Which AWS service should be used to store the backups cost-effectively with high durability?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose EBS Snapshots (Option B) because they assume snapshots are the native backup method for SAP HANA on AWS, but they fail to recognize that SAP HANA requires file-based backups for point-in-time recovery and that S3 offers superior cost optimization through lifecycle policies.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier.
Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier is correct because S3 provides 99.999999999% durability and cost-effective storage for SAP HANA backups. Lifecycle policies automatically move older backups to lower-cost tiers like Glacier, reducing costs while meeting the 2 TB database's daily full and hourly incremental backup requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies to transition to Glacier.
Why this is correct
S3 offers durability and cost-effectiveness for backups.
- ✗
Amazon EBS Snapshots stored in Amazon S3.
Why it's wrong here
EBS snapshots are more expensive for long-term storage.
- ✗
AWS Storage Gateway with volume gateway.
Why it's wrong here
Storage Gateway is for hybrid cloud.
- ✗
Amazon EFS for shared backup storage.
Why it's wrong here
EFS is not cost-effective for backup storage.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
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