PAS-C01 HANA System Replication Practice Question
A company runs its SAP ERP system on AWS. The SAP application servers are in an Auto Scaling group across two Availability Zones. The SAP HANA database runs on a single EC2 instance in us-east-1a. The database instance has an Elastic IP and uses EBS io1 volumes with 5000 provisioned IOPS. During a recent deployment, the company experienced a complete outage when the Availability Zone us-east-1a became unavailable due to a power failure. The database was unavailable for 6 hours until the zone recovered. The company wants to implement a highly available architecture that can automatically recover from an AZ failure with minimal data loss. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 30 minutes. What should the company do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates may mistakenly think that RDS Multi-AZ is available for SAP HANA, but HANA is not a supported engine on Amazon RDS. HANA must be managed on EC2 with HANA System Replication.
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
✓
Set up HANA System Replication with synchronous replication to a secondary instance in us-east-1b and configure automatic takeover.
HANA System Replication with synchronous replication to a secondary instance in a different Availability Zone (us-east-1b) provides automatic takeover, meeting the RPO of 15 minutes (synchronous replication ensures no data loss) and RTO of 30 minutes (automatic failover). Option B is wrong because EBS snapshots every 15 minutes cannot guarantee RPO and RTO; restore time from snapshots often exceeds 30 minutes, and cross-region copying adds latency. Option C is wrong because scaling within the same AZ does not address AZ failure; the single point of failure remains. Option D is wrong because Amazon RDS for SAP HANA does not exist; HANA is not supported on RDS. The correct architecture requires HANA System Replication across AZs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Set up HANA System Replication with synchronous replication to a secondary instance in us-east-1b and configure automatic takeover.
Why this is correct
Correct. HANA System Replication with synchronous mode across AZs provides automatic failover, meeting both RPO and RTO.
- ✗
Take EBS snapshots every 15 minutes and copy them to another region.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. EBS snapshots taken every 15 minutes cannot guarantee RPO and RTO due to snapshot consistency delays and restore time exceeding 30 minutes.
- ✗
Move the HANA database to a larger instance in the same Availability Zone and increase IOPS to 10000.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Moving to a larger instance with more IOPS in the same AZ does not protect against AZ failure; the single point of failure remains.
- ✗
Migrate the HANA database to Amazon RDS for SAP HANA with Multi-AZ enabled.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Amazon RDS does not support SAP HANA; HANA must be self-managed on EC2. Multi-AZ option is not available.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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