PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An SAP administrator is migrating an SAP Business Suite system from on-premises to AWS. The system uses an Oracle database that is 2 TB in size. The bandwidth between the on-premises data center and AWS is limited to 100 Mbps. The migration must be completed within a weekend (48 hours). The administrator decides to use AWS DMS for ongoing replication after an initial full load. However, the initial full load takes too long. What should the administrator do to accelerate the initial full load?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume that increasing compute resources (DMS instance size) or using network acceleration (S3 Transfer Acceleration) can overcome a hard bandwidth constraint, but they fail to calculate the raw transfer time and recognize that physical shipping is the only way to move terabytes within a tight window.
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 Snowball Edge to physically transfer the database backup to AWS, then restore and use DMS for ongoing replication.
The 2 TB database over a 100 Mbps link would take approximately 47 hours just for the transfer (2 TB * 8 / 100 Mbps / 3600 seconds ≈ 47.6 hours), leaving no time for restore and validation. AWS Snowball Edge provides a physical shipping alternative that bypasses network bandwidth constraints entirely, allowing the full load to be completed within the weekend. After restoring the backup from Snowball, AWS DMS can be used for ongoing replication of changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Disable encryption on the database backup to reduce transfer overhead.
Why it's wrong here
Encryption overhead is negligible.
- ✗
Increase the size of the DMS replication instance to the largest available.
Why it's wrong here
DMS instance size does not affect network bandwidth.
- ✗
Use Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration to speed up the upload.
Why it's wrong here
Still limited by 100 Mbps.
- ✓
Use AWS Snowball Edge to physically transfer the database backup to AWS, then restore and use DMS for ongoing replication.
Why this is correct
Snowball bypasses network limitations.
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