PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
A company is migrating an SAP system to AWS and needs to ensure high availability for the SAP Central Services (ASCS) instance. Which architecture should be used to meet this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse high availability with fault tolerance or scalability, leading them to choose Auto Scaling (Option C) or a single-instance Multi-Attach EBS (Option B), which do not provide the automatic failover and AZ-level resilience required for SAP ASCS.
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
✓
Use a cluster of EC2 instances across two Availability Zones with shared storage and a cluster manager.
SAP Central Services (ASCS) requires a high-availability cluster that can fail over between physical hosts while maintaining shared storage and a quorum mechanism. Deploying a cluster of EC2 instances across two Availability Zones with shared storage (e.g., Amazon EFS or FSx for NetApp ONTAP) and a cluster manager (e.g., Pacemaker) meets this requirement by providing automatic failover and data consistency. This architecture aligns with SAP's official high-availability guidelines for AWS, which mandate multi-AZ deployment to tolerate an entire AZ failure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use a cluster of EC2 instances across two Availability Zones with shared storage and a cluster manager.
Why this is correct
This provides HA across AZs with failover.
- ✗
Deploy the ASCS on a single large EC2 instance with a Multi-Attach EBS volume.
Why it's wrong here
Single instance is a single point of failure.
- ✗
Use an Auto Scaling group with a launch configuration for ASCS.
Why it's wrong here
Auto Scaling is not suitable for stateful SAP services.
- ✗
Deploy two EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone with a replicated file system.
Why it's wrong here
Same AZ does not protect against AZ failure.
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 |
Go deeper
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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.