PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is running SAP HANA on AWS and needs to back up the database to Amazon S3. Which approach provides the most efficient and cost-effective backup strategy?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse EBS snapshots as a valid backup method for SAP HANA, but they fail to account for the need for application-consistent snapshots and the fact that EBS snapshots are not integrated with SAP HANA's backup catalog, leading to potential data loss or corruption during recovery.
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 SAP HANA Backint agent to back up directly to S3.
The SAP HANA Backint agent is the native, certified integration for backing up SAP HANA directly to Amazon S3. It leverages the SAP HANA backup API to stream data directly to S3 without intermediate storage, providing the most efficient path with minimal overhead and cost, as you only pay for S3 storage and API calls.
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 AWS Storage Gateway with tapes.
Why it's wrong here
Storage Gateway is not optimal for HANA backups.
- ✓
Use SAP HANA Backint agent to back up directly to S3.
Why this is correct
Backint integrates with SAP HANA for efficient backups.
- ✗
Take EBS snapshots of the HANA data volumes.
Why it's wrong here
EBS snapshots are not SAP HANA-aware and less efficient.
- ✗
Copy HANA data files to EC2 instance store.
Why it's wrong here
Instance store is ephemeral and not durable.
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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