PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is planning to run SAP NetWeaver on AWS and needs to ensure that the architecture supports high availability for the application layer. Which TWO components are essential for an HA SAP NetWeaver application server setup? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse the database layer (RDS) or caching services (ElastiCache) as part of the application layer HA, when in fact the core requirement is multiple EC2 instances across AZs and a load balancer to distribute traffic.
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
✓
Multiple EC2 instances in different Availability Zones
For high availability of the SAP NetWeaver application layer, you need multiple EC2 instances distributed across different Availability Zones (AZs) to eliminate a single point of failure. An Application Load Balancer (ALB) is essential to distribute incoming traffic across these instances and perform health checks, ensuring that if one instance or AZ fails, traffic is routed to healthy instances. This combination provides fault tolerance and automatic failover for the SAP application servers.
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 ElastiCache for session management
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache is a caching service, not for application HA.
- ✓
Multiple EC2 instances in different Availability Zones
Why this is correct
Multiple instances across AZs provide failover capability.
- ✗
A single large EC2 instance for all application servers
Why it's wrong here
A single large EC2 instance creates a single point of failure for the SAP NetWeaver application layer, as any instance failure or AWS maintenance event will interrupt all application server processes. This violates the high-availability requirement, which demands multiple instances across distinct Availability Zones with an Elastic Load Balancer to distribute traffic. It is tempting because a single large instance simplifies licensing and reduces inter-instance communication overhead, and would be correct for a non-HA development or sandbox environment where cost containment outweighs uptime guarantees.
- ✓
An Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic
Why this is correct
ALB distributes traffic across healthy application servers.
- ✗
Amazon RDS for database layer
Why it's wrong here
SAP NetWeaver uses its own database, not RDS.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This PAS-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,616-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. 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.