PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
A company wants to automate the backup of its SAP HANA database to Amazon S3. The database is running on an EC2 instance with a 500 GB gp3 volume. The backup should be encrypted at rest in S3. What is the most efficient way to achieve this with minimal operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume AWS Backup or EBS snapshots are the simplest approach for database backups, but they fail to recognize that SAP HANA has a native, direct-to-S3 backup feature that avoids the overhead of volume-level snapshots and ensures application consistency without additional scripting.
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 Backup and Restore integration with Amazon S3 to back up directly to S3 buckets, enabling default S3 encryption.
SAP HANA natively supports direct backup to Amazon S3 via the SAP HANA Backup and Restore integration, which uses the S3 API to stream backup files directly to an S3 bucket. This eliminates the need for intermediate storage or additional services, and enabling default S3 encryption (SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS) ensures data is encrypted at rest with minimal configuration overhead, meeting the requirement for efficiency and low operational burden.
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 the SAP HANA Backup and Restore integration with Amazon S3 to back up directly to S3 buckets, enabling default S3 encryption.
Why this is correct
SAP natively supports backing up to S3, which is efficient and supports encryption.
- ✗
Back up to an EBS snapshot, then copy the snapshot to S3 using AWS Backup.
Why it's wrong here
This adds unnecessary steps and overhead.
- ✗
Schedule an AWS Backup plan to back up the EC2 instance and its EBS volumes.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Backup can back up EC2 but does not provide application-consistent HANA backups without additional scripting.
- ✗
Use AWS Storage Gateway to back up the database to S3, then enable S3 encryption.
Why it's wrong here
Storage Gateway is not designed for HANA backups; native integration is better.
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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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.