PAS-C01 Design of SAP Workloads on AWS Practice Question
An SAP architect is designing a new SAP S/4HANA system on AWS. The system must be PCI DSS compliant. The architect plans to use AWS KMS for encryption at rest and AWS CloudTrail for audit logging. The database will be SAP HANA on an r5.24xlarge instance with EBS gp3 volumes. What additional step is required to meet PCI DSS encryption 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
✓
Enable SAP HANA data volume encryption using the HANA database engine.
PCI DSS requires encryption of cardholder data at rest. While AWS KMS encrypts EBS volumes at the block level, SAP HANA's data volume resides in its own persistence layer and is not automatically encrypted by EBS encryption. Enabling SAP HANA data volume encryption ensures that data is encrypted within the database. Option A (S3 with SSE) is for audit logs, not the database. Option C (Amazon RDS for Oracle) is not applicable because the system uses SAP HANA. Option D (VPN) is for network encryption, not at rest.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Store all SAP audit logs in Amazon S3 with server-side encryption.
Why it's wrong here
Log storage is not the main encryption requirement.
- ✓
Enable SAP HANA data volume encryption using the HANA database engine.
Why this is correct
HANA data volume encryption encrypts data within the database, meeting PCI DSS requirements.
- ✗
Use Amazon RDS for Oracle instead of SAP HANA to leverage native encryption.
Why it's wrong here
The requirement is for SAP HANA, not RDS.
- ✗
Set up a VPN connection between the SAP system and the corporate network.
Why it's wrong here
VPN is for transmission encryption, not at rest.
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 |
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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.