PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
A company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS. The database is SAP HANA on an EC2 instance. The system is critical and requires a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 5 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 2 hours. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often overestimate the simplicity of EBS snapshots (Option B) for database workloads, not realizing that SAP HANA requires application-consistent backups and that frequent snapshots alone cannot achieve sub-5-minute RPO without significant custom orchestration.
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 AWS Backup with the SAP HANA Backup and Restore feature (Backint integration) to perform continuous backups to S3.
AWS Backup with the SAP HANA Backup and Restore feature (Backint integration) provides continuous, incremental backups to Amazon S3, achieving an RPO of less than 5 minutes with automated, policy-driven backups. This solution minimizes operational overhead by eliminating manual scripting and infrastructure management, while supporting point-in-time recovery within the required RTO of under 2 hours.
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 Backup with the SAP HANA Backup and Restore feature (Backint integration) to perform continuous backups to S3.
Why this is correct
Continuous backups provide low RPO; automated restore meets RTO with low overhead.
- ✗
Use EBS snapshots of the root and data volumes taken every 5 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
EBS snapshots alone are not crash-consistent for HANA; they require application consistency.
- ✗
Set up HANA system replication across two EC2 instances in different Availability Zones with manual failover.
Why it's wrong here
System replication requires managing secondary instance and manual failover increases RTO.
- ✗
Schedule manual HANA backups to S3 using cron scripts and hdbsql commands.
Why it's wrong here
Manual scheduling increases operational overhead and risk of missed 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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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.