PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company is running SAP on AWS and needs to ensure that its SAP HANA database is backed up daily with minimal impact on performance. The database is 2 TB in size and runs on an r5.8xlarge instance. Which backup strategy meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume EBS snapshots (via AWS Backup) are the simplest and least impactful method, but they fail to recognize that snapshots still cause I/O pauses and require database consistency, whereas Backint to S3 is the native, low-impact SAP HANA backup strategy on AWS.
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 the SAP HANA Backint agent to back up directly to Amazon S3
The SAP HANA Backint agent integrates directly with SAP HANA to stream backup data to Amazon S3, which offloads the backup workload from the database instance's CPU and I/O. This minimizes performance impact compared to local EBS snapshots or volume-based backups, as Backint uses S3's scalable throughput without consuming instance storage bandwidth.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Perform a full backup to Amazon EBS volumes attached to the instance
Why it's wrong here
Backing up to EBS volumes consumes I/O and can impact performance.
- ✓
Use the SAP HANA Backint agent to back up directly to Amazon S3
Why this is correct
Backint integrates with SAP HANA for efficient, performant backups.
- ✗
Use AWS Backup to create snapshots of the entire EC2 instance
Why it's wrong here
Snapshots of the entire instance are not SAP HANA-aware and can cause consistency issues.
- ✗
Use AWS Storage Gateway to back up to Amazon S3 Glacier
Why it's wrong here
Storage Gateway is not designed for SAP HANA backups; it's for file/volume backups.
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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