PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is designing an SAP system on AWS with SAP HANA as the database. The system must be highly available across multiple Availability Zones. Which TWO actions should the company take to meet this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse backup strategies (EBS snapshots or S3 replication) with true high availability, or assume manual DNS changes are sufficient, while the exam expects understanding that synchronous HSR plus an automated cluster manager (Pacemaker) is mandatory for HA across AZs.
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
✓
Configure SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) in synchronous mode
SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) in synchronous mode ensures that every committed transaction is replicated to a secondary HANA instance in another Availability Zone before acknowledging the commit to the application. This provides zero data loss (RPO=0) and enables automatic failover, meeting the high availability requirement across AZs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) in synchronous mode
Why this is correct
HSR provides real-time replication to a secondary instance in another AZ.
- ✗
Perform periodic EBS snapshots and restore in another AZ
Why it's wrong here
Snapshots are not real-time and do not provide automatic failover.
- ✗
Use Amazon S3 cross-region replication for the database files
Why it's wrong here
S3 is not suitable for SAP HANA database files.
- ✓
Set up a Pacemaker cluster to automate failover between primary and secondary
Why this is correct
Pacemaker monitors and automatically fails over to the secondary if the primary fails.
- ✗
Use manual failover by changing DNS records
Why it's wrong here
Manual failover does not meet high availability requirements.
Visual reference
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,616 original PAS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PAS-C01 exam.