PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
A multinational company runs SAP on AWS with a complex landscape including development, quality assurance, and production environments. The production SAP HANA database is running on an r5.8xlarge instance with 3.5 TB of data on EBS gp3 volumes. The operations team has been asked to implement a disaster recovery (DR) strategy that can recover the system in another AWS Region within 4 hours. The maximum acceptable data loss is 30 minutes. The current backup strategy uses daily EBS snapshots stored in the same Region. Which approach should the team take to meet the DR requirements?
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
✓
Take EBS snapshots every 30 minutes and copy them to the DR Region using cross-Region snapshot copy. In the DR Region, have pre-provisioned EC2 instances and EBS volumes ready to attach the restored snapshots
Taking EBS snapshots every 30 minutes and copying them cross-Region meets the RPO of 30 minutes, and restoring from snapshots to pre-provisioned instances in the DR Region can achieve an RTO of 4 hours. Option B (AWS Backup daily) fails the RPO of 30 minutes. Option C (pilot light with HANA log shipping) has a longer RTO due to log replay and database recovery. Option D (HANA System Replication across Regions) typically requires a low-latency connection and may not meet the 4-hour RTO due to potential delays in failover and data synchronization.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Take EBS snapshots every 30 minutes and copy them to the DR Region using cross-Region snapshot copy. In the DR Region, have pre-provisioned EC2 instances and EBS volumes ready to attach the restored snapshots
Why this is correct
Snapshot copy every 30 minutes meets RPO; pre-provisioning reduces RTO.
- ✗
Use AWS Backup to schedule daily backups and copy them to the DR Region
Why it's wrong here
Daily backups do not meet the 30-minute RPO.
- ✗
Set up a pilot light environment in the DR Region with a HANA instance replicating via log shipping
Why it's wrong here
Log shipping over long distances may not keep up and requires manual steps, increasing RTO.
- ✗
Configure SAP HANA System Replication across Regions using a VPN connection
Why it's wrong here
Cross-Region replication over VPN may have latency and bandwidth issues, and may not meet RTO.
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